War on Drugs, War on Women
The War on Drugs has been, principally, a war against vulnerable populations. Among its victims are many low-income women and their families.
Read MoreWhere Are Taxes in Human Rights?
How are taxes connected to human rights or how should they be? Why should human rights researchers and activists in the Global South care about taxes?
Read MoreThe Duty to Resign
The Judge Pretelt’s denial to resign for the grave accusations levied against him raises a question, which is abstract but relevant not only in this case, but also many other similar cases: does a public servant’s duty to resign exist or not in these type of circumstance?
Read MoreHans Kelsen in the Tropics
Abelarde De la Espriella, Jorge Pretelt’s lawyer, published this week a column in El Heraldo, where he responds to those who criticized him for saying that ethics have nothing to do with law.
Read MoreMulticulturalism or “Apartheid”?
I do not share the deluge of personal attacks agains Senator Paloma Valencia for her unfortunate proposal to split the Cauca Department in two: “one indigenous department so that they can strike, protest, and invade, and one department dedicated to development, where we can invest in infrastructure, promote investment, and where there can be decent work for its inhabitants.”
Read MorePurge or the Oppression of the Boots
The greater the difficulty a survivor of sexual violence has telling what happened, the greater the recipient’s responsibility to understand it.
Read MoreU.S. Success in Colombia?
The potential success of the peace process will be hard won, not through U.S. foreign assistance in the War on Drugs or the War on Terror, but through the effort and sacrifices of millions of Colombians, over many years.
Read MoreThe Court in Its Labyrinth
The accusations against Justice Pretelt and ex-Justices Rojas and Escobar of the Constitutional Court (CC) are very serious and cannot be brushed under the carpet. It is right that it should generate a strong citizen rejection and that we demand that there be more transparency, definition of responsibilites, and adoption of structural reforms. But it is necessary to distinguish between possible individual transgressions and the CC’s institutional problems.
Read MoreLaw and Ethics
Societies that constantly experience scandals, like ours, suffer from a type of collective squizofrenia. Each story of corruption produces two opposite reactions: while some, the moralists, throw up their hands in horror and clamer for exemplary punishments, others, the cynics, shrug their shoulders and say that nothing has happened until there’s a final conviction.
Read MorePreserve the Court
There are two ways of seeing the justified citizen and media indignation in response to the serious accusations against Judge Jorge Pretelt and the ex-Judges Rodrigo Escobar and Alberto Rojas. And two corresponding forms of navigating out of the Constitutional Court’s crisis.
Read MoreMinimum dose, maximum discussion
Regarding the personal drug consumption, things in this country have not been established.
Read MoreHelena Alviar’s intervention in the VII Encounter of the Constitutional Jurisdiction
On October 10th-12th, 2011, the VII Encounter of the Constitutional Jurisdiction. This time, the Constitutional Court commemorated the 20th anniversary of the 1991 Constitution, in an event called “Constitutional dialogues with the world.”
This encounter was attended by two founding members of Dejusticia: Rodrigo Uprimny and Helena Alviar.
Read MoreRodrigo Uprimny’s intervention in the VII Encounter of the Constitutional Jurisdiction
On October 10th-12th, 2011, the VII Encounter of the Constitutional Jurisdiction was held in the city of Bogotá. This time, the Constitutional Court commemorated the 20th anniversary of the 1991 Constitution, in an event called “Constitutional dialogues with the world.”
This encounter was attended by two founding members of Dejusticia: Rodrigo Uprimny and Helena Alviar.
Read MoreCruelty regarding sexual violence
The cruelty of the State’s indifference to the suffering of women victims of sexual violence continues to spread and threatens to deepen.
Read MoreSecular state, scientific uncertainties, and abortion
Defenders of abortion criminalization in all circumstances depart from three assumptions: i) that every fertilized egg is a person; ii) that, therefore, abortion is unjustifiable, since it destroys a human being and is equivalent to murder, and iii) that therefore abortion should be illegal in all cases to protect human life.
Read MoreRich and unequal
The 2011 national human development report from PNUD was just emitted. It states once again that we don’t distribute things well enough in Colombia. Not a novelty. It confirms that we are one of the most unequal countries in the world with a Gini index of income inequality of 0.58 and 0.85 for rural property, where 1 is absolute inequality.
Read MoreDiscriminating freedom of expression
Despite its good intentions, the new law that criminalizes discrimination due to political or ideological reasons violates freedom of expression.
Read MoreTop Secret
The bill of intelligence and counterintelligence whose constitutionality is currently under review of the Court and in which a group of organizations intend to intervene, considered legitimate to reserve from the public eye all the information produced by entities such as the DAS for the modest sum of 30 years.
Read MoreSymbolic tribunal against sexual violence in Colombia
Last Monday, in Bogota, met a major symbolic international tribunal that examined sexual violence against women in armed conflict in Colombia.
Read MoreThe new society of Gilma Jiménez
“Why do you insist so much in life imprisonment?” asked the newspaper El Tiempo to Gilma Jiménez, referring to her plan to resurrect through referendum her proposal to amend the Constitution in order to punish with death penalty the murder, rape and other crimes against children.
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