Colombia: UN voices concern over new threats to human rights advocates

Thirteen human rights organizations in southern Colombia have received death threats from an emergent illegal armed group, the New Generation, United Nations officials have reported in their latest update on the violence-wracked South American country.

“Their work is indispensable for the preservation and development of a state of law,” the Colombian office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said in a statement expressing concern over the threats against the organizations in the Nariño region.

“The office wishes to reiterate the importance of the work of human rights defenders in Colombia,” it added, noting that the latest threats follow an earlier series made in February and in May and June last year.

The statement referred to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour’s most recent report on Colombia earlier this month in which she stated that the State has the obligation to acting preventively against risk factors that threaten the life, safety and work of human rights defenders.

Colombia has been the scene of fighting between the Government, leftist rebels, right-wing paramilitaries and criminal gangs for more than 40 years, during which scores of thousands of people have been killed and some 3 million others displaced.