OHCHR documented 76 massacres in 2020-the highest figure since 2014-and received reports of 82 more between January and September 2021. As of late September 2021, more than 290 former FARC fighters had been killed in these attacks.įARC dissidents and other armed groups, including the ELN and paramilitary successors, have committed multiple “massacres,” defined in Colombia as the killing of three civilians or more in the same incident. Other FARC dissidents disarmed initially but joined or created new groups, partly in response to attacks by armed groups and others against former fighters. Guerrillas and FARC DissidentsĪ minority of FARC guerrilla fighters, known as FARC dissidents, rejected the terms of the peace agreement, refused to disarm, and continue to commit abuses.

Impunity for past abuses, barriers to land restitution for displaced people, limits on reproductive rights, and the extreme poverty and isolation of Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities remain important human rights concerns. Almost half-a-million people fell into poverty in 2020, according to the government’s multi-dimensional poverty index, and the number of households with children who did not attend school increased by almost 14 percent. The Covid-19 pandemic and measures in place to control it had a devastating impact on poverty and inequality in Colombia. Police officers repeatedly and arbitrarily dispersed peaceful demonstrations and used excessive, often brutal, force, including live ammunition and gender-based violence. The government has taken insufficient and inadequate steps to protect them.īetween late April and mid-June, tens of thousands of people took to the streets across Colombia to protest a range of issues, including a proposed tax reform, economic inequality, police violence, and little protection for vulnerable communities in remote areas. Human rights defenders, journalists, Indigenous and Afro-Colombian leaders, and other community activists face pervasive death threats and violence. But conflict-related violence has since taken new forms, and abuses by armed groups, including killings, massacres, and massive forced displacement increased in many remote areas of Colombia in 2021.Ĭivilians in various parts of the country suffered serious abuses at the hands of National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas, FARC dissidents, and paramilitary successor groups. The peace accord in 2016 between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the government ended a five-decades-long armed conflict and brought an initial decline in violence.

Human rights armed conflict