Columns & Blogs

As UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zainab Hawa Bangura said, breaking the armed groups' silence about sexual violence is one of the first necessary steps to guarantee truth and justice to victims.

Coauthored by Angélica María Cuevas

The idea calling for a second phase of the El Cercado dam in the Riego Ranchería District of La Guajira (a Department in Northeastern Colombia), has revived the indigenous group Wiwa's concerns. They belive that, for a second time, their opinion has not been considered in the government's plans to authorize, since this year, the construction of preliminary public works for the construction of damns and irrigation systems in the Districts of Ranchería and San Juan del Cesar. These works, according to Ariel Borbón Ardila, head of the Colombian Institute for Rural Development (Incoder, by its name in Spanish), are estimated to cost $546 Billion Colombian Pesos (about $227.5 Million U.S. dollars). 

Peace, according to the FARC, is basically a political process that should remove the "legal vine" with which some would like to choke the life out of it. César Gaviria has weighed in similarly ashis idea of "transitional justice for everyone" is not legal but political: the ex-President thinks of it as a "collective political decision," that cannot be put off by international law.

One time I found myself with a foreign colleague that moved to Colombia. I asked how he was doing and he said he was doing very well, that he loved traveling through the country and enjoy the diversity of climates, fruits, and landscapes.

The magic of prison is to create the illusion of resolving problems, when it simply hides or postpones them. It's the form of sweeping under the rug our incapacity to deal with our issues: prison for those who discriminate, for drunk drivers, for young people who use drugs.

Last week there were newstories about two cases that involved high-level public servants.

I was convinced that the charismatic Pope Francis was doubly infallible. First for being Pope, as according to the First Vatican Council of 1870, the Supreme Pontiff does not make mistakes, at least when his declarations have benefited from the assistance of the Holy Spirit. And second for being an Argentine... well at least Argentines seem to think that makes you infallible.

Jules Jouy, a nineteenth century Frenchman, said that there were three types of judges: those that decide standing, those that decide sitting in their chairs, and those that decide laying face down. 

If war, according to Clausewitz, is the continuation of politics by other means, then human rights are the limit of both politics and war.

It is fundamental that everything in the judiciary, from the investigation by the Prosecutor's Office to the sentence at Court, not be neutral in terms of gender.