2010

On Tuesday night, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton landed in Colombia; by today she'll be in Barbados. During her 24 hours in Colombia, do you think she heard much about the rise in threats and attacks against Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities in Colombia? Did President Uribe talk with her about the illegal wiretapping that part of his special intelligence service used to sabotage the work of human rights defenders, journalists, and Supreme Court judges? Or would you guess she talked with any of Colombia's almost 5 million internally displaced people about how they have been robbed of their land and forced to live in misery?

We doubt it. But these issues are exactly what she must be thinking about as the State Department prepares to make its most important decision on U.S.-Colombia policy this year.

The pursuit of justice “is a challenge that we have been called to take on, and we have no idea how far this journey will lead us,” said Guatemalan human rights defender Jesús Tecú Osorio at a reception in his honor on May 17th, 2010. Human Rights First and the Guatemala Human Rights Commission (GHRC) organized this gathering to celebrate Tecú’s selection as winner of the 2010 Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty Award for international human rights defenders.

President Obama was elected with a campaign of hope, and change.  Those of us who care about Latin America hoped that U.S. foreign policy towards the region, too often unilateral and focused on military solutions, would also change.

A year ago, at a summit of Latin America’s leaders, President Obama hit a note that resonated well with his counterparts: “I pledge to you that we seek an equal partnership. There is no senior partner and junior partner in our relations.”

After that hopeful moment, though, the new administration stumbled at the starting gate. 2009 was a rough year for U.S. policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean. Latin American governments and civil society groups were disappointed by the Obama Administration’s inattention, vacillation on democracy and human rights, and failure of imagination in creating more humane policies, especially after it secretly negotiated a defense agreement with Colombia and backed off from efforts to urge resignation of the coup regime in Honduras despite an admirably united Latin American and OAS response to protect the democratic order.

Death threats, attacks and assassinations. Human rights defenders and indigenous, afro-descendant, and IDP leaders in Colombia often face these terrors, but lately there has been a major spike in these actions—and we’re worried. This past week, LAWGEF and our partners released a public statement to the Colombian and U.S. governments, calling on the Colombian government to take action now to investigate and prosecute these threats and attacks, protect the people at risk, and make it publicly clear that human rights defenders’ work is legitimate and important.

May 27, 2010 – SPECIAL UPDATE: The Senate Rejected Border Amendments that Would Have Resulted In More of the Same. Today, all 3  “border security first” or “enforcement-only” amendments were defeated during debate on a supplemental appropriations package. Thanks to all who called and took a stand for sensible solutions for the SW border region!

Now we need to see the President and Congress get serious about comprehensive reform and long-term solutions – not quick fix ‘solutions’ like military hardware - to address organized crime related violence in Mexico – efforts that should include strengthening the judicial system, improved accountability for the police and robust protection of human rights. Rather than offering serious solutions, some policymakers have offered more of the same, band-aid, window dressing measures that score political points but don’t solve the problem. That includes President Obama’s decision, announced earlier this week, to send 1,200 National Guardsmen to the border. His decision directly contradicted the facts and what his own administration has been saying for months. Sending the National Guard to the border will not solve our immigration crisis.

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Your senators need to hear from you NOW to halt efforts to further militarize the U.S.-Mexico border region. We understand that the Senate will be voting TODAY on a trio of harmful amendments seeking to expand misguided, enforcement-only approaches along our Southern border.

LAWGEF, along with partner U.S. and international human rights organizations, today issued a memo to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging the State Department to recommend in its next report to the U.S. Congress on human rights requirements in the Merida Initiative that the conditioned funds for Mexico not be released until the Mexican government demonstrates concrete and measurable advances in meeting these requirements.  

To read the full memo, click here. Otherwise, below you will find an executive summary of the memo.

As I listened to mothers and sisters and sons describe how they found their loved one in the morgue of a Colombian army base, dressed up in a guerrilla uniform when they knew he was a civilian, I was not only saddened, I was stunned by the striking similarity of the cases. From Casanare, Meta, Cauca, the facts were so similar. Witnesses saw the person being taken prisoner by a group of army soldiers.  They went looking for him, thinking he’d be detained on the army base. Then they were shown a photo or the body of their relative, dead and claimed by the army as killed in combat.

Waiting for Change reviews the first year of the Obama Administration’s Latin America policy, especially regarding military relationships and aid trends. Barack Obama’s message of change resonated in Latin America, but we’re still waiting for real shifts in policy. This report by the Latin America Working Group Education Fund, Center for International Policy and the Washington Office on Latin America offers a detailed evaluation of what has been modified, and what remains the same, in U.S. policy towards the region.

Read our publication Waiting for Change (PDF)
Lea nuestra publicación Esperando el cambio (PDF)