Taxing Sugary Drinks, Why Not?
It’s true that the current market does not give us the best and most accurate information about the quality of the products we eat and drink.
Read MoreTemporary Status Harms the Judiciary
This year, the judiciary has a temporary status that seems to matter very little. For example, the Superior Judiciary Council, which exists until the end of the transition period to the Balance of Powers reform, has less than half of its judges sworn in.
Read MoreESCR Start to Catch Up
The end of 2015 marked important milestones for the protection of ESCR in the UN and OAS human rights systems, in which both systems determined that these rights are justiciable.
Mayors and Ph.D.’s
Some have been outraged by Peñalosa’s suggestions in interviews or books flaps that he has a Ph.D. , when he doesn’t, and that he hasn’t had the decency of at the very least making a public apology for his ruse.
Read MoreThe Mayors’ Vanity
The last two mayors of Bogotá have led citizens to believe that they had a Ph.D., when in reality they only did “Ph.D. studies”; that is to say, they only took coursework in a Ph.D. program that makes part of the long process that eventually leads to the conferral of a Ph.D. degree.
Read MoreAccounts and Tales of Medications
Why are medicines so much more expensive in Colombia when compared to other countries? The debate about a cancer treatment drug (Imatinib) exemplifies the reasons, documented in a study that we published with the expert Rochelle Dreyfuss and specialists of the Americas.
Read MoreOur Everyday Sexism
Last week, at the Book Fair, I participated in a discussion that revealed that sexism is present in our society with a rare force and that feminism is a disregarded voice in our public debates.
Read MoreDrugs, Mafias, and Peace
We either change drug policy to weaken paramilitarism and the strongholds of organized crime that remain from the internal conflict, or the possibilities for peace building will be much more difficult and uncertain.
Read MoreTrump, Duterte and the “Strongman”
When we give swashbucklers like Duterte and Trump the absolute power to decide who is the good person and the bad, to remake what innocence and justice mean, we corrupt them absolutely. A leader who comes to power will eventually do anything to stay in power–including turning his back on those who put him there. And when we realize that we have unleashed a monster, it is already too late to put the genie back in the bottle.
Post-UNGASS: From Why to How to Change Drug Policy
Colombia insisted at the UN that the War against Drugs has failed, it’s time to implement more intelligent policy domestically.
Read MoreTransit: educate to not punish?
Death due to traffic accidents are as painful as inevitable, and have led to many politicians and citizens to ask for stricter punishment against those responsible for said accidents.
Read MorePeace dialogues and drugs: possibilities in between and beyond prohibition
Las negociaciones del gobierno con las FARC en La Habana abren un espacio para nada despreciable para limitar el impacto negativo del narcotráfico sobre la violencia y la democracia en Colombia, por lo que conviene intentar desarrollar ideas que orienten los debates en este campo. El propósito de este artículo es brindar algunas herramientas teóricas…
Read MoreA peace message from South Africa
Prison is not the most direct path toward peace.
Read MoreThe selectivity of the Inspector General regarding human rights
Inspector General Ordóñez [his first name should also be used at first] has a strange relationship with international human rights law. When he talks in opposition to the Legal Framework for Peace, Ordóñez seems to be the most obedient follower of the principles advocated by international human rights bodies. But when he talks about the rights of women, the Inspector General blatantly ignores the concepts and criteria of these same international bodies.
Read MoreFrom the farm to the enterprise
Without a doubt, this government is better than Uribe’s government, which managed the country as if it were the authoritarian taskmaster of a farm and had no shame in accepting alliances with dark forces.
Read MoreWrit of Protection for the Constitutional Right (acción de tutela) to health care and the tragedy of brand-name medicine
Writs for the protection of the constitutional right to health are a product of the demand for better access to brand medicine; these writs exemplify the tension between realizing the people’s right to health care and the countervailing need to maintain the financial sustainability of the health care system.
Read MoreTrivialising racism
Major advances have taken place to make the black population and the discrimination against them more visible, as was shown in the opening acts of the World Afro Summit in Cali and Cartagena.
Read MoreMistaken interpretations or a misleading message?
About the press releases issued by the Constitutional Court on the decision about the Legal Framework of Peace.
Read MoreHuman rights and the law of drugs
What happens if a state’s international obligations towards drugs clash with its international human rights obligations?
Read MoreThe 970 and the future of seeds
The agrarian strike and the documentary 9.70, in which ICA (Colombian Agricultural Institute) officers are filmed destroying 62 tons of rice in the state of Huila to comply with Resolution 970 of 2010, have placed the issue of seeds in the center of public debate. The principal discussion has revolved around how 970 regulates the production, use and commercialization of seeds in Colombia. The Government has decisively defended the resolution, pointing out that the documentary is inaccurate and ungrounded. But rather than wearing itself down by denying the existence of a problem and defending itself from the critics, some of which have been proved to be true, the Government should recognize the mistake and make progress toward the solution that it has already been thinking about.
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