Human Rights Watch: EU Should Hold Uribe to Rights Commitments

[Jack Rabbit]

Press release from Human Rights Watch
Dateline Brussels, Tuesday February 10

Colombia: EU Should Hold Uribe to Rights Commitments

The European Union should postpone a donors conference planned for later this year until Colombia fulfills key human rights commitments, Human Rights Watch said today. Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, scheduled today to address the European Parliament in Strasbourg, has reneged on an agreement made only last year with donor countries and the United Nations to implement 24 recommendations made by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The broken commitments include a promise to refrain from backing legislation that would allow the military to carry out warrantless arrests and searches—a recipe for an increase in torture and forced disappearance. Also unfulfilled are commitments to break ties between illegal paramilitaries and units of Colombia’s security forces.
“Colombia is at a turning point, and the European Union’s position will be decisive,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Executive Director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch. “President Uribe needs to hear that he will be held to his promises.”
The European Union has pledged over € 330 million ($410 million) in aid to Colombia in a package that ends in 2006. Unlike U.S. funding, which mainly goes to Colombia’s armed forces, nearly all of the European aid goes to civil society and to the United Nations office in Colombia. Europe is the largest donor to Colombia’s humanitarian, human rights and peace programs.

Read more.