In figures

66% of the defenders accompanied by PBI Colombia feel that their guarantees of protection for the exercise of their work in defence of human rights had further deteriorated in 2021 compared to the previous year. This is largely due to the reconfiguration of illegal armed actors and their increased presence in the territories. Human rights organisations and victims of sociopolitical violence stress the importance of PBI’s physical accompaniment, given that the activities that they carry out are associated with a high level of risk. All of the accompanied organisations surveyed in 2021 agreed that PBI’s presence reduces potential risks and therefore contributes to the success of their human rights defence strategies and activities. Throughout 2021, PBI had a greater capacity to respond to requests for accompaniment than in 2020. This is due to a combination of the arrival of new brigadistas to the field teams and a gradual return to face-to-face activities. Compared to 2020, PBI’s face-to-face accompaniment increased by 62%, a steady recovery of the capacity of the years prior to the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

PBI Colombia’s field teams provided physical accompaniment to accompanied human rights organisations on 215 occasions while also contributing indirectly to the protection of other organisations, social movements and communities in the territories.

Over the course of 2021, in line with the thematic focuses that have been prioritised by PBI Colombia, the following accompaniments are of special note:

1. Access to and use of land and territory

In the department of Putumayo, in the south of the country, PBI accompanies the Justice and Peace Commission (JyP). The organisation in turn accompanies the communities living in the Peasant Reserve Zone “Perla Amazónica” (ZRCPA) in their defence of their rights and denouncement of environmental damage to their territories. Specifically, they closely accompany the Association

for the Integral Sustainable Development of

the “Perla Amazónica” (Adispa), an organisation that defends human rights and the environment, and whose legal representative is the emblematic leader Jani Silva. Despite the territorial control of the area imposed by armed actors and the constant threats against Adispa and JyP, the two organisations, with the accompaniment of PBI, were able to enter the ZRCPA to carry out their work on three different occasions during the second semester of the year. Jani Silva, who had not been able to return to the territory for a year due to her high level of risk, was able to do so on two of these occasions. In August PBI accompanied JyP in an emergency response to the confrontations and paramilitary incursions on ancestral indigenous and AfroColombian territories in the Litoral San Juan on Colombia’s Pacific coast, where communities were being forcibly displaced1 . PBI Colombia accompanied the verification mission at a time when JyP considered that it could not carry out its work without PBI’s presence. We also accompanied the organisation on numerous occasions in the Bajo Atrato region in the second half of the year, where JyP works on strengthening communities in the face of the presence of armed actors. Given the extremely serious human rights violations in the Río Chageradó indigenous reservation in the Jiguamiandó and Curvaradó basins, as well as in the Embera indigenous reservations of Acandí and Unguía, JyP has indicated that it was only able to enter the area along with international accompaniment. PBI also highlights the accompaniment provided to Nomadesc during a humanitarian mission in the department of Buenaventura, specifically on the Yurumanguí, Cajambre and Raposo rivers. The mission, which was made up of United Nations agencies, Colombian human rights organisations, civilian institutions, and international organisations, verified the situations of confinement and forced recruitment which have developed in the territory following the reconfiguration of various illegal armed actors. It was in these anscestral lands that two emblematic leaders of the Afro-descendant community of the Yurumanguí River, Abencio Caicedo and Edinson Valencia, were forcibly disappeared. The leaders had previously been threatened for their defence of illicit crops substitution, and their opposition to mining and the presence of armed groups. In reaction to the situation, PBI organised an advocacy tour with Berenice Celeita, president of Nomadesc. As a direct result of this tour, on 31 December the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) took the decision of granting precautionary measures for both leaders2 .

Leader Jani Silva has been displaced on numerous occasions due to the extremely high risks that her environmental and human rights defence work exposes her to. Throughout 2021, international campaigns were organised in order to raise her profile and provide her with further protection. Following a year in which she was unable to hold organisational meetings in defence of her territory, in the second half of 2021, Jani Silva was able to return to visit the Peasant Reserve Zone “Perla Amazónica”.

Despite the many attacks it has subject to, the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó continues to resist in its territory and cultivate the land collectively. PBI regularly accompanies the Peace Community to the rural farming areas where they carry out their communal agricultural work which aims to ensure their food sovereignty.

As a result of the serious risks faced by the Community’s Internal Council, members only travel between the different rural settlements with international accompaniment. The capture in October of the top commander of the AGC, Dairo Antonio Úsuga, has not changed the dynamics of the social control wielded in the region by the illegal armed group. This includes the practices of forced recruitment of minors, selective assassinations and threats to social leaders. For these reasons, the Community continues to consider PBI’s accompaniment essential.

2. Business, human rights and the environment

In 2020, Colombia was the country with the highest number of environmental defenders murdered worldwide, with 64 reported murders3 . In 2021, there was a significant rise in attacks against human rights and environmental organisations in the Magdalena Medio region. In particular, the Regional

Corporation for the Defence of Human Rights

(Credhos) and its allied organisations, the Federation of Artisanal, Environmental and Tourist Fishermen of Santander (Fedepesan) and the Committee for the Defence of Water, Life and Territory of Puerto Wilches (Aguawil) have received death threats, attempts on their lives4, forced displacement and gender-based violence after they denounced irreparable damage to water basins and opposed fracking pilots in the region. PBI accompanied Credhos on a number of occasions in its activities denouncing attacks and accompanying victims who had been targeted for their environmental defence. PBI’s presence on these occasions raised the profile of environmental leaders in the area and increased awareness of the environmental problems affecting fishing communities. PBI’s accompaniment has also meant that Credhos was able to carry out activities to strengthen and form alliances in the social environmental protection movement.

3. Guarantees of political participation for civil society

From the first days of the National Strike which began on 28 April 2021, PBI stood alongside the accompanied organisations in their efforts to guarantee the right to protest, and to verify the human rights violations which were being committed by state agents during the strike5 . During this period, PBI accompanied the José Alvear Restrepo Collective (Ccajar), the Committee for Solidarity with Political Prisoners (CSPP), Nomadesc, Dh Colombia, the Nydia Erika Bautista Foundation (Fneb), Credhos, the Social Corporation for Community Advice and Training (Cospacc) and JyP, in different departments of Colombia. In Cali, PBI continuously accompanied Nomadesc for an uninterrupted period of more than a month and a half while they documented cases of arbitrary detention, forced disappearance, police violence, torture, prosecutions, provided legal advice and humanitarian aid, and participated in the protests and in inter-institutional round-tables which had been convoked to provide an urgent emergency response. Nomadesc considered our role of protection and visibility vital within the framework of these activities. In Bogotá, PBI accompanied JyP on numerous occasions to increase the profile of the Portal de las Américas Humanitarian Space. The Portal de las Américas was a centre for artistic and cultural events and press conferences which was the site of innumerable human rights violations committed during the protest, including the excessive use of force by the police, arbitrary detentions, disappearances and sexual abuse.

Due to the complexity of the situation in the Southwest of Colombia, where there has been a persistent increase in attacks and threats against the communities and their leaders, the accompaniment of PBI Colombia “ continues to be crucial for Nomadesc: PBI accompanied us on the mission until the very end and, for us, this is incredibly important because they were able to observe the serious situation affecting the communities first-hand. They also accompanied when we were setting up the ”Raposo River humanitarian shelter.

In June, PBI accompanied a visit by representatives from the IACHR to the Humanitarian Space where they collected testimonies of human rights violations committed during the National Strike. PBI also accompanied the CSPP in human rights monitoring and intervention commissions, in the interest of ensuring guarantees for the act of protesting.

These verification commissions are part of the “Defender la Libertad: Asunto de Todos” (Defending Freedom: Everyone’s Business) campaign, a network of social, student, cultural, community and human rights organisations, of which several of the organisations accompanied by PBI are members.

PBI also accompanied CSPP to the National Summit “Building Memory and Dignity” which brought together victims of police violence from all over the country. The participants have carried out important work to promote police reform aiming to prevent human rights violations by the security forces. The CSPP considers that PBI’s accompaniment was necessary to obtain greater visibility and guarantees of protection for protest participants.

4. The fight against impunity

Over the course of 2021, PBI accompanied Dh Colombia in multiple virtual court hearings where they were representing the families of victims of police violence. These included the family of Nicolás Neira (a student who was murdered by a member of the ESMAD in Cali on 1 May 20056), Jhonny Silva (a Univalle student murdered on 22 September 2005), and Angie Baquero and Jaider Fonseca (who were murdered, allegedly by the police, on 9 September 2020, in the Verbenal neighbourhood of Bogotá). In order to secure the full truth, justice and guarantees of non-repetition, Dh Colombia seeks to clarify the criminal responsibility of the intellectual authors responsible be it through action or omission. In the same vein, hearings were accompanied in relation to the massacre that occurred in the Siloé neighbourhood on 3 May 2021, a crime which led to the murder of Kevin Agudelo. JyP and Nomadesc represent the victims in this case. Daniel Prado has continued his work as defence lawyer for the victims in the case of “The 12 Apostles”, the criminal trial in which the main defendant Santiago Uribe Vélez – brother of former president and exsenator Álvaro Uribe Vélez – is accused of allegedly founding this paramilitary group. After being postponed on several occasions, the hearings were finally concluded at the beginning of February 2021. The definitive sentence regarding the responsibility of Santiago Uribe Vélez has been pending since then. PBI Colombia has provided Daniel Prado with comprehensive accompaniment throughout the entire hearing process. According to the lawyer, the presence of PBI has been crucial in order to ensure that there are certain minimum guarantees that have allowed him to continue working on this emblematic case.

Representing the families of victims of police violence puts the organisations’ legal teams at high risk and PBI’s accompaniment has helped to protect them and make their cases more widely known.

In February 2021, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) published their findings that between 2002 and 2008, 6,402 civilians were victims of extrajudicial executions at the hands of members of the National Army in Colombia.

Four of the organisations accompanied by PBI – Dh Colombia, Cospacc, CSPP and Ccajar – are leading extremely sensitive cases concerning several of the top military commanders implicated in extrajudicial executions. As part of the process, PBI accompanied Dh Colombia, who represents victims of extrajudicial executions, to the hearing held by the JEP in which the retired General of the National Army General Mario Montoya gave his testimony. Dh Colombia understands that this is a case that exposes its members to high risk, in particular their lawyer Germán Romero, who was eventually forced to go into exile from Colombia. The organisation believes that the accompaniment of PBI Colombia has been fundamental to guarantee its protection and legitimise its work internationally. In December 2021, PBI accompanied Ccajar in Bogotá during a cultural event in which several artists repainted the mural “Quién Dio La Orden” (Who Gave The Order) on a prominent wall in Bogotá, near the José María Córdova Military Cadet School. The mural was originally designed by the Campaign for Truth, a coalition of several human rights organizations who work with victims of extrajudicial killings and had been censored following it’s original installation in 2019. One of the commanders who appeared in the original mural,General Marcos Evangelista Pinto Lizarazo,filed a tutela (writ of protection of constitutional rights) with the Constitutional Court in 2019 in which he asked to have the image of the mural removed from social media because, according to him, it violated his rights to “honour and good name”. In November 2021, the Constitutional Court’s ruling T-281/2177 upheld the right to freedom of expression. The Court underlined the fact that victims have the right to extrajudicial truth that contributes to the

construction of historical memory. The ruling also underlined the gravity of the events surrounding the extrajudicial executions, crimes for which a large number of members of the national army are currently under investigation. As part of its fight against impunity, Ccajar continues to work on emblematic cases involving high-ranking Colombian commanders. In one of their most important cases, ex-president Álvaro Uribe Vélez is under investigation for allegations of witness tampering in order to cover up his alleged links with paramilitaries. Reinaldo Villalba Vargas, vice-president of Ccajar, legally represents Senator Iván Cepeda in this process. Cepeda publicly accused Álvaro Uribe of wittness tampering in 2014 in a session of the Congress of the Republic. It is important to remember that in 2020 Álvaro Uribe gave up his seat in the Senate, which led to the process being transferred from the Supreme Court to the ordinary justice system. In 2021,the Prosecutor’s Office sought the preclusion of the case due to the “in-existence of evidence against the accused”. Human rights defender Reinaldo Villalba, who appealed the Prosecutor’s decision, detailed multiple irregularities in the process8, leaving him exposed to threats and at considerable risk. PBI closely monitored the lawyers complicated security situation which was worsened as a result of his participation in this case. The decision on the continuation or end of the investigation process will be taken by the ordinary justice system at some point in 2022. Cospacc’s work to ensure that the crime of enforced disappearance does not go unpunished remains one of its central focuses. In December 2021 Cospacc, alongside the Orlando Fals Borda Collective, presented the report “Resistance to forgetting and impunity” to the JEP9 . The report documents 145 cases of forced disappearance in the “Llanos Orientales” (Eastern Plains region) of Colombia, and calls on the JEP to open a macro-case on forced disappearance focusing on the territorial situation of this region, where a number of the crimes are said to be the responsibility of state agents and paramilitary groups. Journalist Claudia Julieta Duque continues to fight for justice and against impunity for the psychological torture she was subjected to by members of the now defunct DAS (Administrative Department of Security – State Intelligence Agency).

PBI accompanied the journalist for years during the hearings before they were suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Following this suspension, Claudia Julieta has condemned the process as re-victimising and decided not to attend any more hearings. At the end of 2021, the Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP) and Claudia Julieta Duque reported that the National Protection Unit (UNP) had been mass-collecting highly sensitive personal information without the journalist’s consent. To this end, they had used the information from the GPS device of the vehicle she had been assigned as a protection measure. Due to the seriousness of her situation and in order to guarantee her safety, PBI accompanied the journalist on many of her journeys within the city of Bogotá.

5. Building a stable and lasting peace

PBI has accompanied various activities in 2021 related to the Peoples’ Intercultural University (UIP). The UIP is an educational and research project that analyses the social, political, economic and armed conflict in Colombia and brings together 34 grassroots organisations from the Southwest of Colombia, as well as welcoming students from other regions of the country. This pedagogical process, led by the organisation Nomadesc, aims to strengthen collective, intercultural and traditional networks and structures in the face of the ongoing escalation of the Colombian conflict. Nomadesc maintains that the accompaniment of this peace project by PBI is fundamental to the protection of its participants. Since October 2020, several human rights organisations such as the Nydia Érika Bautista Foundation (Fneb), the Justice and Peace Commission (JyP), Madres por la Vida, and the Movement of Victims of State Crimes (Movice), among other organisations, have demanded that the JEP grant the San Antonio estuary precautionary protection measures. These measures would protect the area, located in the port city of Buenaventura, where the human remains of disappeared persons are known to be located. In December 2021, the JEP decreed these precautionary measures for the San Antonio estuary in order to guarantee the rights of the victims of enforced disappearance. To this end, it prohibited any intervention or activities related to civil works at the site for 180 days, with a possibility of extending this order. PBI has also accompanied Credhos and the

Association of Small-Scale Farmers of the

Cimitarra River Valley (ACVC) over the course of their participation in the Comprehensive System of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of NonRepetition (SIVJRNR). PBI accompanied Credhos over several days documenting cases of sexual violence and forced disappearance in the Magdalena Medio region. The information was presented to the JEP as part of a report on the region which was carried out in collaboration with the Humanitarian Action

Corporation for Coexistence and Peace in Northeast Antioquia (Cahucopana).

PBI’s accompaniment in these spaces served to make the organisations’ work more visible before the SIVJRNR, while also having a strong protection component. Activities were carried out with victims of sexual violence who had not previously participated because of the serious threats they had received. Credhos insists that they would not have been able to carry out these activities without the accompaniment of PBI. Credhos has also been accompanied many times in relation to its work with the Unit for the Search for Disappeared Persons (UBPD). On these occasions, PBI’s accompaniment allowed participants to feel more protected when giving their testimonies and ensured that Credhos’ overland journeys and activities unfolded without any serious security incidents. PBI also accompanied the ACVC at the ceremony to present the report “Nos quisieron acabar” (They wanted to finish us off) to the Truth Commission (CEV). The report documents the attacks on the peasant movement in Magdalena Medio between 1990 and 2010, with a special focus on the role of peasant women who resisted the armed conflict. At the event, which took place in Puerto Matilde (Antioquia) in the presence of the president of the CEV, Francisco de Roux, PBI and other organisations played an important role raising awareness of the report.

PBI Colombia’s accompaniment during the hearings has increased the profile of Fneb’s work which defends the right to truth and justice, and seeks reparation for the families of the victims of enforced disappearance in Buenaventura. The city is home to an estimated 1,725 disappeared persons according to the JEP’s official estimates10 .

1. Codhes: 2021, el año con mayor número de víctimas de desplazamiento en 5 años, 22 December, 2021. 2. CIDH: CIDH otorga medidas cautelares a favor de Abencio Caicedo y Edinsón Valencia García en Colombia (oas.org), 7 January, 2022. 3. The highest figure reported in any country within the last eight years. El Tiempo: Colombia encabeza listado mundial de ambientalistas asesinados, 6 August, 2020. 4. Credhos (@Credhos_Paz): Tweet, 26 March, 2021; Credhos (@ Credhos_Paz): Tweet, 21 January, 2021; El Espectador: Petróleo, paras y amenazas en el Magdalena Medio, 1 March, 2021. 5. See: “¡El Pueblo no se rinde!”, pg. 54 6. El Espectador: Condenan a 17 años de prisión al agente del Esmad que disparó contra Nicolás Neira, 29 April, 2021. 7. PBI Colombia: “¿Quién dio la orden?”: reivindicación firme de Justicia y Verdad, 28 December, 2021. 8. El Colombiano: Caso Uribe: defensa de Cepeda dice que Fiscalía se abstuvo de investigar, 4 October, 2021. 9. El Tiempo: En informe, le piden a la JEP abrir macrocaso sobre la desaparición forzada, 3 December, 2021. 10. El Espectador: JEP ordena protección de estero de Buenaventura donde hay desaparecidos, 17 December, 2021.