Colombia

The International Secretariat of Amnesty International publishes its own website, with country specific news and campaigns. Do check out the Colombia page.

Significant Events from Newsletters 2025

April 2025

Amnesty has issued a new Urgent Action calling on President Petro to stop making stigmatising statements about civil society organisations in Catatumbo and instead be open to dialogue and to the participation of local organisations in the implementation of human rights centred solutions to the Catatumbo crisis.  This follows a statement by President Petro on 3 March claiming that civil society organisations in Catatumbo were “permeated” and “subordinated” to armed groups.  Amnesty said that, besides being unjustified and unacceptable, this statement endangered the members of these organisations and legitimised the violence that they, as well as the civilian population of Catatumbo in general, have been enduring since mid-January.

March 2025

Amnesty has issued a new Urgent Action calling on the National Police to guarantee the safety of members of the fishers’ association FEDEPESAN and to prevent their forced displacement.  On 15 February, FEDEPESAN announced that they felt forced to carry out a collective displacement from the lakes and rivers surrounding the city of Barrancabermeja.  In recent years, including the first two months of 2025, FEDEPESAN members have been subjected to numerous instances of harassment, threats, robbery, extortion, and even attempted murder by armed groups.

February 2025

Amnesty has made a public statement calling for the protection of the civilian population of Catatumbo, a region in the north-east of Colombia where last month armed violence broke out involving confrontations between the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the so-called General Staff of Blocs and Fronts (EMBF) resulting in reports of killings of dozens of civilians, massive forced displacements of thousands of people and heightened risks of forced confinements, more killings and enforced disappearances.   You can support Amnesty’s call by taking this Urgent Action. We worked on this case at our February meeting – here is a letter you can use.

January 2025

Amnesty has released a new report Transforming pain into rights: Risks, threats and attack on women searchers in Colombia.  The report documents the reality experienced by the women who dedicate their lives to searching for the victims of enforced disappearance in Colombia, and the need for society to recognize these women and for the authorities to guarantee their rights, given the serious obstacles they face in demanding truth and justice.  The report has been prepared as part of Amnesty International’s #SearchingWithoutFear campaign, which calls for the recognition and protection of women searchers across the Americas.

Amnesty’s 2023 report on Columbia (published April 2024)

Amnesty has published its Annual Report on Colombia detailing human rights abuses. These include huge numbers of people being forcibly displaced, the high risk of indigenous, Afro-descendant and peasant communities, femicide, violence against LGBTI people, attacks against human rights defenders and lack of protection for Venezuelan refugees. The government failed to implement comprehensive police reform. Progress was made on the use of force during demonstrations, measures to protect human rights defenders and on investigating war crimes

Significant Events from Newsletters 2024

November 2024

Amnesty International has published Yanette Bautista’s story of how she has been searching for her sister Nydia Erika Bautista who was forcibly disappeared in 1987. Three years later, Yanette found Nydia’s remains – she had been murdered by state authorities and her whereabouts concealed to her family. It was the first time she learnt about enforced disappearances, an issue that is rife in Colombia – even today – with an estimated 200,000 people disappeared between 1985 and 2016 according to the 2022 Final Report of Colombia’s Truth Commission.

Amnesty has issued a new Urgent Action on behalf of the Fundación Nydia Erika Bautista (FNEB), a women’s organization that promotes the rights of victims of enforced disappearance and fights impunity. On 24 October, with new information on the enforced disappearance of Nydia Erika Bautista, suspicious activity was recorded during an invitation-only gathering of FNEB and authorities and an email hacking attempt was made. We call on the Attorney General’s Office to investigate the threats and hacking and bring those responsible to justice. The correct contact email is derechoshumanos@fiscalia.gov.co

The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó reports that seven months since the killing of Nallely Sepúlveda and Edinson David, there has been no advance in investigating their murder. ‘Impunity continues.’ Over two hundred members of the Peace Community have been killed since its foundation in 1997. They are located in an area under the effective control of the Gaitanistas, also known as the Clan del Golfo, a former paramilitary grouping that is now the largest and richest criminal organization in Colombia.

October 2024

Amnesty has issued a new Urgent Action : On 10 September Jani Silva, a defender of land, territory and the environment in the Colombian Amazon (department of Putumayo), received a phone call threatening to “blow you up, car and all”. Jani and her association ADISPA have protection measures in place, provided by the government’s National Protection Unit (UNP). We call on the Colombian authorities to identify those responsible and to bring them to justice. Please take action.

August 2024

Amnesty International has launched a campaign to demand that governments support a Torture-Free Trade Treaty to regulate the trade in policing equipment to ensure it does not end in the hands of abusive police forces. They cite the excessive use of violence using non-lethal weapons by Colombia’s police in response to the National Strike in 2018. Please sign the petition, which for UK residents will be redirected to the British government. Accompanying this demand is the first hand account by Leidy Cadena, the first person to be blinded by police in 2018, who has been forced to leave Colombia.

July 2024

Yuly Velásquez, President of FEDESPAN (Federation of Artisanal, Environmental, and Tourist Fisherfolk of Santander Department), received AI Germany’s human rights award on 4 June. The UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Amnesty’s Secretary General were at the ceremony. FEDESPAN members have been targeted by armed groups and have been the subject of several Urgent Actions issued by Amnesty in recent years. You can still take action here. Please send copies of your email to Roy Barreras, Colombian Ambassador to the UK, elondres@cancilleria.gov.co

June 2024

Amnesty International has issued a new report on grave abuses committed by the police during the National Strike of three years ago. This opens with musicians and dancers performing to remind us of the violent events where their leader lost an eye to a rubber bullet. Protesters were killed, others lost their eyes or were sexually abused. Many of these injustices remain unpunished. Some who reported the abuses have been threatened and had to flee the country. How is it possible that a police reform that ensures that these events never happen again is not part of today’s political agenda?’

May 2024

Amnesty issues a short film showing the devastating impact of a less than lethal weapon on Leidy Cadena in the April 2021 National Strike in Colombia.  Please write to President Petro and Defence Minister Velásquez demanding police reform now.  During the National Strike, at least 84 people lost their lives, thousands were arbitrarily detained and more than 100 people sustained eye trauma. Amnesty has denounced torture, gender-based violence, sexual violence and excessive use of force in the context of the 2021 National Strike, attacks on Indigenous peoples and torture of the civilian population.

Colombia is included in Amnesty’s new report on abortion rights in the Americas. “In Colombia, we’ve seen harassment, slander, and insults levelled against those who provide abortions, who are often ostracized at work. We always have to constantly be wary because the threats never stop”, explained Dr. Gil. “For example, they slashed one of my friend’s car tires. They glued shut a different colleague’s padlock so she couldn’t open her locker. When a friend who is a psychiatrist stood up for a patient who was asking to terminate her pregnancy… one of her colleagues hit her with a folder.”

April 2024

The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó remembered the killings of seven of their members in recent years, including the boy Deimar Usaga, who was found with a bullet wound to his head opposite the Army barracks in 2019. None of the killings have resulted in prosecutions. 19 March 2024 30 year-old Nalleli Sepulveda and 14 year-old Edinson David were the latest Peace Community members to be killed. The perpetrators of the killings are believed to be Gaitanistas paramilitaries, whose presence is tolerated by the Army and the State.

Amnesty International has written to President Petro demanding that the State protect the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó and end impunity for those who have perpetrated human rights violations against members of the Community. Please sign Amnesty’s petition demanding that the Colombian authorities protect human rights defenders.

March 2024

Amnesty International has issued a second Urgent Action on behalf of the Colombian human rights NGO CREDHOS. On 13 February the home of one of the members of CREDHOS suffered an attack by grenade, which injured members of the family. This new Urgent Action is directed at the Attorney General’s Office demanding that the perpetrators by brought to justice. One of the major difficulties in stopping these attacks on human rights and environmental defenders is the impunity under which they operate. It is rare indeed for anyone to be brought to justice.

February 2024

The Colombian NGO Indepaz found that 187 social leaders and human rights defenders were killed in 2023, about the same number as in 2022 and 2021.  44 former FARC guerrillas were killed in 2023, a slight reduction from the prior two years. A further 55 people were killed by landmines and 167,000 people were forcibly displaced in the year. In broad terms, violence continues at a high level despite the Government’s efforts to negotiate ceasefires with armed opposition groups. A more detailed analysis will be published by Programa Somos Defensores later in the year.

January 2024

Amnesty hosts Yuly Andrea Velásquez Briceño, who explains how they formed the Federation of Artisanal, Environmental and Tourist Fishermen of the Department of Santander (FEDEPESAN) in 2017 to defend their water rights, and the risks this entails.  Shots were fired at her in 2021 and she has received death threats. In 1991 her 5-year old brother was killed by a stray bullet fired by guerrillas and two years later her father was killed by paramilitaries.

Please sign Amnesty International’s petition to the Colombian government demanding that they protect human rights defenders and, in particular, members of CREDHOS (Regional Corporation for the Defence of Human Rights). CREDHOS was formed in the 1980s and in 2023 a bomb was placed at their office by ELN guerrillas and while accompanying an administrative police procedure in the area known as “Finca El Hebron” in Barrancabermeja, staff members of CREDHOS were shot by armed civilians.