Colombia: rights in retreat for the last nine years
FIAN supports presentation of parallel report on ESC-Rights to UN Committee Malnutrition, health service deficiencies and the labour situation: three serious concerns in the Parallel Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Report to be launched in Geneva and Bogotá The Colombian state will also present its Fifth Report to the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Committee of United Nations on May 4
Bogotá DC, May 2, 2010 – More than 20% of children in Colombia suffer malnutrition, while 40.8% of homes live with food insecurity; 15 of every 100 households do not have adequate housing; since 1993, more than 80% of the hospital network’s installed capacity has been closed or restructured; between 1992 and 2006 the number of permanent jobs in industry fell by 40% while the number of temporary contracts rose by 192%, and some 7,020 workers were prevented from unionizing by official decisions.
These are some of the revelations detailed in the “Parallel Report to the Fifth Report of the Colombian State to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights”, which will be presented by Colombian and international social organizations on May 3 in Geneva, Switzerland. This report represents one of the contributions to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), a United Nations body, which will examine the situation in Colombia. The UN will also analyze the Fifth Report presented by the Colombian State regarding its compliance with obligations derived from the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) on May 4 and 5 in Geneva.
Three years ago social, popular, academic, union and human rights organizations, which form part of the Colombian Platform for Human Rights, Democracy and Development, in coordination with other networks and organizations, began a process of monitoring and evaluation concerning the state of economic, social and cultural rights in Colombia between 2001 and 2006, with some issues explored up until 2009.
As a result of this process, the “Parallel Report to the Fifth Report of the Colombian State to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights” was produced. The report reveals the Colombian state’s failure to comply with its immediate obligations, such as the provision of free primary education, labour recognition of “madres comunitarias” (community child-carers) or the realization of agrarian reform. On this last issue, the report demonstrates an agrarian counter-reform has taken place, with the displacement of indigenous, campesino and afrodescendent communities from their land through a combination of legal and illegal mechanisms.