Executive Summary
Conditions in Colombia remain grave. A 50 year civil conflict between rebel groups (e.g., FARC, ELN, AUC) and the Colombian government continues to be problematic. This memo addresses the peace building and transitional justice attempts between thee rebel groups the Colombian government. It is important to consider the entire political environment, including all involved actors, in order to analyze the transitional justice attempts and recommend potential steps. In 2014, tensions between FARC and the Colombian government, as well as between rebel groups themselves remain high but their notable peace building attempts. If transitional measures are not addressed soon, conflict will likely because of the cyclonical conflict
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These groups likely formed in response to the oppression and atrocities during La Violencia. They based their legitimacy on their goal of fighting for the Colombian people who were oppressed by the conservative government (Rollow, 2014). It can also be argued that their overarching goal was to regain power of the state by demolishing the Marxist based, conservative powers (Watson). Corruption within the government and a lacking justice system to appropriately resolve tensions are two potential reasons that these hostilities remain …show more content…
Reports from Amnesty International (2013) highlight its association with internal conflict, violations of international humanitarian laws, internally displaced persons (IDPs), mass killings from bombing urban villages, sexual abuse, assassinations of government officials, and kidnapping/hostage situations. Colombia is associated for one of the highest kidnapping rates in the world (Restrepo, Spagat, Vargas, 2004). Ultimately, Colombia is a hostile and insecure environment for its civilians, with kidnappings, political conflicts, armed conflicts, and assaults (Watson, 1998; Theidon, 2007).
A concerning topic is the human rights violations of Colombian citizens. Urban village bombings and oppression of urban persons has often left civilians no choice but to flee their homes (Amnesty International, 2013; Summers, 2012). It is noted that civilian atrocities have also resulted from collateral damage during internal conflicts (Restrepo, Spagat, Vargas,
Plan Colombia is a long-prevailing foreign aid package bestowed to the country of Colombia from the United States. This foreign aid package grants substantial financial assistance to Colombia, intending to fight the “War on Drugs” and to reduce the trafficking of narcoleptics, but there is a multitude of other factors and implications, both unintentional or indirect and intentional due to ulterior motives. To accomplish the goals of Plan Colombia, most of the aid has been provided in the form of armed forces. This situation is complicated because of the ongoing civil war between the government of Colombia and the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People’s Army (FARC). Additionally making matters difficult has been the strong association of the Colombian military and some right wing paramilitary units. Such conflict in Colombia exacerbates its drug problem, but Plan Colombia allegedly seeks to tame.
In August 2011, four soldiers were sentenced to 30 years for each murder plus 30 years for crimes against humanity, totaling 6,060 years each for the massacre in a village of Dos Erres in (“Guatemala hands down”) Although there is an attempt being made to convict the guilty, there are many people who should be punished, but will likely never be found to be sentenced (“Guatemala hands down”). It is even common for many people who do not receive adequate “justice to form lynch mobs or hire assassins” (Birns). The escalated violence has caused the community of Guatemala to experience instability and insecurity. The impact today is continued by the organizations who initially caused the conflict, including the “state’s security system” such as “death squads, intelligence units, police deployments, and military counterinsurgency forces” (Birns).
In 1963, as protest to the authoritarian regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem, Buddhist monks began to go to public places in Vietnam and commit suicide, by drenching themselves in gasoline and setting themselves on fire. They did this as an act of civil disobedience, defined as an act of defiance of specific laws or policies of a formal structure which the individual or group believes to be unjust. The Buddhist civilization in Vietnam was not apparent to the Americans until the Buddhists began sacrificing themselves in Saigon’s public streets. The pictures of the monks engulfed in flames made world headlines and caused American intervention; and later the capture and killing of Diem and his brother. In contrast to these acts of civil disobedience, one can observe the actions of suicide bombers. In the Palestinian territories, those who support suicide bombing claim that it is merely a tactic of war in defense of their land and homes. Without superior weaponry, they see it as “a heroic act of martyrdom, a final act of resistance, stemming from desperation”(Suicide Bombers). Both the Buddhist monks and the “suicide bombers” in Palestine resort to self-sacrificial actions as their form of violent civil disobedience. Violent forms of civil disobedience should only be necessary to counter violence but never if it inhibits upon the liberties of the innocent. By this definition, the actions of the Buddhist monks are more justifiable than those of suicide bombers in the Middle East.
The current century has witnessed immense improvement and re-conceptualization of standards and sovereignty of human rights in Latin America. With the endemic repression and violations of human rights throughout Latin American in the mid to late 20th century, the International human rights regime, an amalgam of international and intergovernmental organizations and bodies, expanded exponentially. By conducting investigations within certain countries, or simply monitoring overt violations of human rights, the international human rights regime stimulated global awareness of violations of human rights in different countries; soon to follow was change in domestic policy in response to international policy. This also led to increased opposition by domestic NGOs against repressive governments or dictatorships largely responsible for human rights violations. Just as well, a number of organizations and groups aided domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in their growing efforts to establish judicial practices that better protected human rights. Declarations, conventions, and charters, established a number of values that served as the credo for the organizations that constituted the international human rights regime. Over time, more and more countries were pressured and held accountable for these values, which developed into universal standards for human rights practices. Thus the International Human right regime and the pressure they imposed upon governments ultimately resulted in widespread positive changes in human rights.
Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, 15 November 2000, available at: http://www.osce.org/odihr/19223
During the author’s life in New York and Oberlin College, he understood that people who have not experienced being in a war do not understand what the chaos of a war does to a human being. And once the western media started sensationalizing the violence in Sierra Leone without any human context, people started relating Sierra Leone to civil war, madness and amputations only as that was all that was spoken about. So he wrote this book out o...
Many organizations and programs are working to stop human trafficking and its insubordinate criminals. Organizations, such as the United Nations Conven...
Violence marks much of human history. Within the sociopolitical sphere, violence has continually served as a tool used by various actors to influence and/or to control territory, people, institutions and other resources of society. The twentieth century witnessed an evolution of political violence in form and in scope. Continuing into the twenty-first, advances in technology and social organization dramatically increase the potential destructiveness of violent tools. Western colonialism left a world filled with many heterogeneous nation-states. In virtually all these countries nationalist ideologies have combined with ethnic, religious, and/or class conflicts resulting in secessionist movements or other kinds of demands. Such conflicts present opportunities for various actors in struggles for wealth, power, and prestige on both national and local levels. This is particularly evident in Indonesia, a region of the world that has experienced many forms of political violence. The state mass killings of 1965-66 mark the most dramatic of such events within this region. My goal is to understand the killings within a framework of collec...
White, Matthew. Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres, and Atrocites Before the 20th Century. 1999-2010. Document. 30 October 2013.
Imagine waking up one day to the thundering of blows given at the door telling you to “open up or be shot down.” It is the Serb police, and they are telling you that you and your whole family had to leave your home immediately. This is how it went for many Albanian people during what some Serb extremists called “demographic genocide.” This was the beginning of what many would call the Kosovo War, and it lasted from March to June 1999. After NATO’s intervention in Kosovo, something strange happened. Now the people being victimized were the Serbs and anyone who was “friendly” to them. In this paper, I will speak about what happened before and after the war in Kosovo.
middle of paper ... ...-. Amnesty International, n.d. -. Web. The Web.
Williams, Robert E. "From Malabo to Malibu: Addressing Corruption and Human Rights Abuse in an African Petrostate." Human Rights Quarterly 33.3 (2011): 620,648,925. ProQuest. Web. 10 Oct. 2013.
Many argue that the Bosnian crisis is a prime example of why humanitarian intervention is a flawed and unsuccessful option. Critics argue that, even though the UN prevented hundreds of thousands of Bosnians in besieged towns from starvation, it did little or nothing to stop Bosnian Serbs from shelling these areas and ethnically cleansing them of Muslims. Furthermore, others claim that NATO’S degrading of Serb military capability from the air did nothing to save those civilians trapped in UN-created safe areas. In 1995 at least 7,414 Muslim men were rounded up in a Screbrenica enclave and systematically killed in the worst war crime of the whole war. However, while such examples may indicate that humanitarian interventions are not a legitimate option, there are also positive aspects that in some cases, compensate for, and override these negative flaws.
Zolberg, Aristide R., Astri Suhrke, and Sergio Aguayo. Escape From Violence: Conflict and the Refugee Crisis in the Developing World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Print. The. Hymowitz, Sarah, and Amelia Parker. " Lessons - The Genocide Teaching Project - Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law." American University, Washington College of Law. American UniversityWashington College of Law Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, 2011.