I thank the committee for its time and interest. I will briefly go through the recommendations and then make some comments about the political context in Colombia in which we defined these recommendations.
As the committee may know, there was an important intergovernmental meeting on Colombia in July 2003 in London, and one of the major focuses of the Irish Presidency should be to guarantee a follow up to the commitments the Colombian Government signed up to in the declaration published in London. These commitments were to continue the search for a negotiated political solution; to implement the United Nations recommendations on human rights; and to effectively protect human rights defenders, social leaders and trade Unionists. This should be the basis for the Irish strategy towards Colombia.
A very important point is the expression of support for the legitimate work of human rights NGOs. The Council conclusions of December 2002 should be reiterated. They requested that the Government of Colombia respect and support human rights defenders and that those responsible for threats and attacks against NGOs, including civil servants, be investigated and penalised. In this context of attacks and threats against human rights defenders, we would like to make a special comment on the case of Mrs. Esperanza Amaris Miranda, who was murdered by paramilitaries in the city of Barrancabermeja, the seat of the Peace Laboratory supported by the European Union.
The European Union, and especially the Irish Government, should remind the Colombian Government of its obligation to dismantle paramilitary groups; to penalise those responsible for committing crimes and to sever the links between these groups and civil servants, as reiterated by the United Nations. The FARC-EP and the ELN should be urged to immediately and unconditionally free all hostages as a demonstration of goodwill towards a search for a negotiated solution to the conflict.
The European Union should continue to support the search for a political negotiated solution in Colombia, while taking into account that any demobilisation process should respect the principles of truth, justice and reparation to the victims. This is especially important in the context of the demobilisation process with paramilitaries that was recently started by the Government. In this context the Colombian Government should be urged to revise the Bills that the United Nations considers incompatible with international human rights norms, especially a proposal about the reincorporation of members of armed groups, which is very important in the context of the demobilisation of paramilitaries. The United Nations has repeatedly declared that this Bill contradicts international obligations of the Colombian state.
It is very important that the Government of Ireland reaffirms its support for the United Nations High Commissioner's office for human rights in Bogota, and it might also be interesting to recommend to the Irish Government that it renew its economic support for this office because we understand that this support ran out in 2001. It is very important to make the point that the European Union could take a step further during the next session of the UN Commission on Human Rights and recommend to the commission that, apart from the declaration of the President on Colombia, the commission should agree on sending the report to the UN General Assembly in 2004. That would mean that the Colombian Government would be held responsible twice a year rather than once by the UN Commission on Human Rights.
On the political context within which we formulate these recommendations, we have observed a continuous deterioration of the human rights situation in the country. As the committee might know, the United Nations has repeatedly stated its concern, and we remind the committee especially that Mary Robinson, while she was still UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote a letter to President Uribe just three weeks after he entered office to express her serious concern about several security policy measures proposed by the Colombian Government. She was especially concerned with measures pretending to involve the civilian population further in the conflict, such as the informants networks and peasant soldiers.
Mary Robinson was deeply concerned about this and mentioned it to President Uribe at a very early stage, but the Government did not take this very seriously and proceeded with its strategy. The foreign affairs ministry in Colombia today informed us that it has already recruited 1,600,000 informants. That means that there are 1,600,000 more civilians involved in the conflict. The Government has also ignored the concept and the comments issued by the UN High Commissioner's office on the draft Bill on the reincorporation of members of armed groups. The UN office has repeatedly stated that this draft Bill opens the door to impunity in the process with paramilitaries. It is very important to insist that the Colombian Government revises the draft Bill.
We were very concerned about recent declarations of President Uribe attacking human rights defenders, basically with the intention of discrediting their work. There was a very strong international reaction but he repeated his accusation on several occasions, which we consider very serious. As the assassinations of human rights defenders have shown, the declarations of the president had very serious consequences.
A positive development was the high voter abstention in the referendum and the results of the municipal and departmental elections which took place on 25 and 26 October. My Colombian colleagues will explain in detail the impact of the results of these elections because they changed the political environment in Colombia a great deal.
