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Photo
Copyright © Teun Voeten, 2001 |
Few
of the world’s internal armed conflicts, of which
there are many, are as subject to international law as
Colombia’s. Yet despite the application of a wide
range of international rules to the parties waging war
in that country, the violations of human rights and humanitarian
law are increasing and intensifying.
According to the Colombian Commission of Jurists, a prominent
human rights NGO, on average 19 persons were killed or
disappeared every day between April and September of 2000
as a result of the armed conflict. The daily average for
war-related violent deaths during most of 1999 was 12;
it had risen to 14 by March 2000. Almost 80% of these
crimes are attributable to state security forces or paramilitary
groups; guerrilla fighters were responsible for the remaining
20%. Widespread impunity ensures that the vast majority
of victims receive no justice at the domestic level. In
the international arena, underdeveloped procedures and
mechanisms guarantee that, for now, perpetrators of international
crimes do not have to answer for the most brutal of their
actions outside Colombia either.
Two pressing questions arise. What good is it to have
international law apply in the Colombian context if hardly
anyone respects it in practice? What role, if any, does
international law play in the ongoing armed conflict there?
These inquiries guide the discussion developed in this
essay.
I. Human Rights Conventions and
International Humanitarian Law (IHL)
Certainly there is no lack of applicable international
law. Colombia has ratified the full panoply of United
Nations human rights treaties, including the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR]. It has
similarly ratified the OAS American Convention on Human
Rights, and accepted the jurisdiction of the Inter-American
Court of Human Rights for individual cases arising under
this treaty. With respect to international humanitarian
law [IHL], Colombia has ratified the Geneva Conventions
of 1949 and both Additional Protocols; Protocol II, which
governs intense conflicts of a non-international character,
is particularly relevant to the war in that country. By
subscribing to the principal human rights and IHL treaties,
Colombia has inserted itself fully into the international
legal regimes that seek to ensure that countries abide
by and respect the human rights and humanitarian law norms
they have adopted, especially in times of war.
Before discussing these regimes, a clarification is in
order. Under traditional principles of international law,
only states and their officials violate human rights.
As premier legal scholar Louis Henkin explains, "the
international law of human rights derives principally
from contemporary international agreements in which states
undertake to recognize, respect, and ensure specific rights
for the inhabitants of their own countries." Private
actors such as the paramilitary or guerrilla groups in
Colombia do not violate human rights norms because they
are not subject to the obligations established in human
rights treaties for governments and their agents. International
humanitarian law, on the other hand, explicitly contemplates
international responsibility for private individuals and
non-state actors, as well as government officials, who
act in contravention of IHL provisions during armed conflict.
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