Columns & Blogs

We have debated much about how social injustice and the state's weakness have influenced violence in Colombia. However, we have not explored how our culture and values affect that same violence.

When we look for those responsable for the judiciary's crisis, usually the disgraceful ones stick out: the lawyer that says on the record that "ethics have nothing to do with the law," or his client, the judge that puts this phrase into practice and schemes to drag on the investigation that proceeds against him in Congress.

The student conduct manuals are like a carte blanche of the small kingdoms known as schools.

The French philosopher Jean Francois Lyotard proposed a suggestive metaphor about the difficulty a society has in recording the truth and remembering a period of mass atrocities, like the genocide by the Nazis.

In Colombia the radio has greatly developed, encouraged perhaps by difficult geography and poor communication among regions. Lacking highways, Colombians have communicated through radiowaves.

"The rich don't need the law because they already have money and power; it is the poor that need the law," once said Albie Sachs, the lengendary South African activist that advised Mandela in the peace dialogues and became judge of the first post-Apartheid Constitutional Court.

Data management cannot be done by any means and much of that data can affect people's privacy.

The relationship of member states with the OAS and the structure of human rights have changed over time. This conference, given within the framework of the event "Impact and Future Directions for the Inter-American Human Rights System" May 29th in Puerto Rico, analyzes in what manner it has evolved.

In Colombia abortion is legal in three exceptional cases: when the life or health of the pregnant woman is at risk, when the fetus' malformations make it impossible from him/her to live outside the uterus, and when the pregnancy is a result of a carnal violation.

For those that were educated in Catholic schools during John Paul II's papacy, to be more Catholic than the pope meant defending ultraconservative positions on topics like birth control or the rights of women and same-sex couples.