By Mario A. Flores
Special Features Editor, Impunity Watch Journal

BOGOTA, Colombia — The United States has quietly made the legal certification this week that Colombia’s human rights record has improved in spite of reports alleging that serious abuses and impunity for illegal activity in the Latin American nation persist.

This certification will allow Colombia to access $32 million that Washington has withheld as part of a $545 million package that the U.S. government is to provide Colombia this fiscal year under the State Foreign Operations Appropriations Act. The funds are meant to fight gangs and drug smugglers.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Colombia has “made significant efforts to increase the security of its people and to promote respect for human rights by its Armed Forces,” which justify the determination that the nation meets the legal certification criteria on human rights and paramilitary groups.

According to Kelly, factors that led to the upgraded finding are reforms and training that have resulted in respect for human rights by most of the Armed Forces coupled with significant advances in investigating and prosecuting human rights cases over the past few years.

Kelly described “several disquieting challenges” where Colombia must still make progress, including allegations of soldiers involved in extrajudicial killings — which the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions described as “systematic”–, illegal surveillance by the government’s security agency, and the ability of the Prosecutor General’s Office to conduct thorough and independent investigations that result in accountability.

The Attorney General’s Office is said to be investigating cases involving more than 1,700 alleged victims in recent years.

Colombian officials insist they are trying to stamp out human rights abuses, but critics say abuses remain widespread in the country, where the government has been battling the left-wing guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) for years.

Ongoing anti-union violence, with the offenders rarely brought to justice, led the International Trade Union Confederation to say that Colombia is the deadliest country in the world for labor rights activists.

According to Human Rights Watch, there has also been an increased activity of new armed groups linked to paramilitaries. These groups engage in threats, targeted killings, and forced displacement of civilians, very much like the paramilitary groups of old that are supposedly demobilized.

The media and civil society have reported that there has been a recent rise in forced displacement partly as a result of the activities of these new paramilitary groups. Last year, more than 380,000 persons were internally displaced, according to Human Rights Watch.

Maria McFarland, senior Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch, said that the U.S. decision was disappointing and that Colombia’s government had responded to abuse allegations only after intense pressure.

For more information, please see:

The New York Times – U.S. Upgrades Colombia’s Human Rights Score – 11 September 2009

The Washington Post – US certifies Colombia’s rights record – 11 September 2009

Department of State – Determination and Certification of Colombian Government and Armed Forces with Respect to Human Rights Related Conditions

Human Rights Watch – Colombia: Obama Should Press Uribe on Rights – 26 June 2009