Columns & Blogs

Those were the words uttered by the mayor of Dallas, Mike Rawlings, during the vigil held after five police officers were shot to death by an armed man during a peaceful protest of the Black Lives Matter movement, which was organized after two African American men were killed by police. Well, let's talk about race.

The Colombian State must build conflict resolution systems using what exists on the ground, and it must incorporate conflict resolution systems that are not State-based to its overall strategy.

In my previous entry, I argued that after the peace accords, there are other policies more important than forgiveness like the design of adequate mechanisms for solving conflict. 

José Manuel Acevedo proposed, in his most recent column, that the Constitutional Court signal that in the "plebiscite for peace" (which, in reality, is closer to a people's consultation) voters are allowed to cast blank ballots.

A critique to the so-called "plebiscite for peace" is that it replaced the "participation threshold" (UP) for an "approval threshold" (UA), which deprives abstention from having legal effects. The latter would be anti-democratic and would violate the right to "active abstention," which the Constitutional Court has recognized in citizen participation mechanisms such as referendums, plebiscites or consultations. 

While public attention has been focused on recent announcements about the peace process, the fact that the Victims' Law just reached five years of existence has gone almost unnoticed. 

Sixteen ministers and Vice President Vargas Lleras have already made public their assets and income. The whole Cabinet accepted an invitation by President Santos's and by a Transparency for Colombia campaign to disclose the income of public officials. 

The crime against comedian Jaime Garzón has been solved. This was what the prosecutor managed to say recently. Maybe it's my own ignorance, but I don't think any light has been shed on the death of political humor in Colombia

Women’s bodies are a battleground for the meanings vested in them, and for the social and cultural resources expected to be obtained by intervening on them. Two modes of intervention on the body show this, and pose particular risks for girls: Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and plastic surgery.

Both a plebiscite and an act of the legislature are part of a normative system, and they must be interpreted together, not in a disjointed way.

I attended a two-week international workshop on post-conflict politics that brought together over 150 people from war-torn countries. Most of them came from places with civil wars like Colombia, while others were from countries involved in large external wars with serious internal repercussions. There were people from Liberia, Mali, Sri Lanka, India, Egypt, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Mexico, Yemen, and Nepal. All their stories are striking, interesting, and share similarities with the Colombian case.