EUROPEAN UNION COOPERATION IN COLOMBIA. Contributions from the European and international civil society organizations members of the platforms

Transcription

1 EUROPEAN UNION COOPERATION IN COLOMBIA Contributions from the European and international civil society organizations members of the platforms DIAL 1 Christian Aid (United Kingdom and Ireland), Civis Sweden, Diakonia Sweden, Diakonie Katastropenhilfe-Germany, Lutheran World Relief, Norwegian Refugee Council, Project Counselling Service, Oxfam GB, Heks-Switzerland, Peace Brigades International (observer) PODEC 2 Benposta International, Cordaid, Cooperacciò, Intermón-Oxfam, The Lutheran World Federation, Mensen met een Missie, Misereor, Mundubat, Terre des Hommes- Germany, Trocaire, War Child OIDHACO 3 International Office for Human Rights - Action Colombia I. OBJECTIVES OF THE COOPERATION OF THE EU IN COLOMBIA According to the Colombia Country Strategy Paper (CSP), the objective of the cooperation of the European Commission in Colombia is "to contribute to peace and to stability while not losing of sight of the major economic development potential that a peaceful Colombia could generate for the entire Andean region." 4 "The cooperation of the EU and its distribution by sectors reflects the European support in the search for peace in Colombia and the mitigation of the consequences of the conflict" 5. These objectives seem appropriate to the context and needs of Colombia. 1 DIAL is a coordination and advocacy platform for INGOs present in Colombia, some with more than 20 years working in different regions of the country, which seeks to influence public policies to overcome the humanitarian crisis, impunity, poverty and inequality in Colombia, in accordance with the principles and norms of international human rights and humanitarian law. 2 PODEC is a space of confluence of European NGOs for cooperation, which seeks to influence international and national policies for the development in order to support the integral development of Colombia from a rights approach, the political negotiation of the armed conflict, and the location of humanitarian assistance in development perspective. 3 OIDHACO is a network of European and international organizations based in Brussels. Its main task is to promote and support the advocacy activities of Colombian human rights organizations, European development agencies, European solidarity organizations, the churches and international human rights organizations. Oidhaco seeks to contribute to the construction and strengthening of democracy, the rule of law, and peace with social justice in Colombia. 4 EU Commission, Colombia Country Strategy Paper , pg Delegation of the European Commission, The European Union and Colombia, Bogotá (February 2009, p ).

2 1. To first of all bring short-term relief to the conflict in Colombia, the EU will provide aid to victims of violence. The situation in Colombia cannot be considered as a post-conflict situation. The victims of the Colombian conflict in some cases are re-victimized, especially if they are demanding their rights to truth, justice, reparation and non repetition of crimes 6. It is essential to strengthen the victims and their organizations as actors, to demand their rights and to build peace in Colombia. It is a particular priority to strengthen victims capacities to claim their rights before national courts or, in their absence, before the International Criminal Court, whose prosecutor has placed Colombia under "preliminary analysis By way of a medium-term contribution to the settlement of conflict in Colombia, the EU will seek to promote peace at the local and national level. The European Union has provided and continues to provide assistance in the context of the internal armed conflict. Its partner is the Colombian state and, within it, particularly the executive branch. The EU should have in place mechanisms to ensure that assistance to communities channeled through the Colombian government does not end up being directly or indirectly linked to its war strategy. The CSP states that "the EU will continue to support local peace processes through local institutions and civil society." 8 Some government actions are directly contrary to this objective, for example, the spraying of productive projects, the stigmatization and prosecution of NGOs leaders, the combination of state civic action strategies with military actions, among others. To improve the relevance and effectiveness of the Peace Laboratories, it is important that the EC stress more the subject of the armed conflict and the need for a negotiated political solution at the national level. To enable the European Commission "to [channel] all its cooperation efforts in Colombia towards peace, 9 the implementation of the CSP should be more audacious and purposeful on the subject of a national policy of peace, absent until now. Without such a national peace policy, the existing strategies of the European Union could be articulated without this being the desired goal to the dynamics of war that have predominated in Colombia since the rupture of the negotiations in El Caguán. We recall that point 5 of the Declaration of Bogotá, of 30 November 2007, emphasizes the support to develop dialogues leading to an integral humanitarian response and to peace." 6 The case of the recent murder of Ana Isabel Gómez Pérez, leader of the displaced population of Córdoba, dramatically illustrates this reality. CARACOLTV.COM, 15 April According to the Prosecutor of the CPI (for its acronym in Spanish) at: (Accessed 25 April 2009.) 8 EU Commission, Colombia Country Strategy Paper , pg Ibid., pg. 6. 2

3 3. With a view to achieving a long-term effect on the conflict in Colombia, the EU will strive to promote development for all, and in this way tackle the roots of the armed conflict in Colombia. Colombia is classified as a middle-income country, but it is one of the most unequal countries in the world. The poorest 20% of the population earns less than 3% of income, while the richest 20% earns almost 62%. 10 In Colombia, as a consequence of and simultaneously with the forced displacement of over 4 million people since 1985, a phenomenon of agrarian counter-reform, concentration of land ownership 11 and promotion of major agricultural projects based on exports, has taken place. In many regions, agro-export projects use land abandoned by the displaced population or benefit from the sale of land by people or communities who are under pressure and threats by armed groups. Many small farmers have no other choice than to sell their plots and leave the region, and it is deplorable that most of the productive projects for the displaced population, sponsored by the Colombian government in alliance with Colombian and international business, consist of transforming displaced peasants into farm workers. This context must be taken into account when promoting competitiveness in rural areas. The sector 'Competitiveness and Commerce' of the National Indicative Program seems to be more focused on "getting through" a Free Trade Agreement that is extremely unbalanced and disadvantageous for small and medium businesses in Colombia, than on really strengthening the economic fabric. In this sense, we are concerned that in order to ensure the best investment conditions for their companies, with this negotiation the EU is affecting the productive capacity, the peasant economy and the capacity of the vulnerable rural population to live decently on the land. In this sense, the EU would also affect the prospects for structural reforms in the Colombian countryside, which is contrary to its goal of combating the roots of the armed conflict in Colombia. We warn of the possibility that the EU FTA may contain tougher conditions for Colombia than the FTA that Colombia signed with the United States. It is the case that the aspirations of the European negotiating team are publicly known in relation to the protection of intellectual property, which would have serious consequences for the Colombian population s access to generic drugs (patents issued for as long as 25 years and imprisonment for those who violate the intellectual property rights). While these partial negotiations with some of the Andean countries are not the main cause of their division, they certainly do not favor the integration of the Andean region." The EU should consider increasing its support for land protection strategies for vulnerable communities (Afro-descendants, indigenous and peasants). 10 DNP-MERPD Continuous Household Survey (third quarter). 11 In 2005, 0.4% of landowners owned more than 60% of the land, almost double what they owned 20 years ago. Meanwhile, 58% of landowners held less than 2%. Luis Jorge Garay et. al., Poverty in a highly inequitable country, 2008, pg.14. 3

4 II. AID TO COLOMBIAN STATE A cooperative relationship with the Colombian government and other state institutions is important in order for the EU to maintain a political dialogue on compliance with the principles of democracy and the standards of human rights and international humanitarian law, the result of international treaties and one of the fundamental objectives of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) under Title V of the Treaty of Maastricht. For these reasons we recall attention to the following issues: 1. The implementation of the Paris Declaration. This Declaration marks a step forward in the global agenda that seeks to improve the effectiveness of development assistance. However, the implementation is problematic in Colombia, especially the principles of APPROPRIATION, because the serious problem of human rights violations, grave infringements of International Humanitarian Law and infiltrations of illegal armed groups and drug trafficking in the political, social and economic institutions, should be resolved first; ALIGNMENT, since it is necessary to strengthen and involve more Colombian civil society and local institutions in the entire process of planning, implementation and evaluation of Development Plans. How to be aligned with a national development plan that depends on a war plan? How to align cooperation policies characterized by the search for a negotiated solution to the internal armed conflict, with the denial of the existence of the conflict? Should alignment take place with some social projects (Families in Action, Families of Forest Rangers) framed within Plan Colombia?; and HARMONIZATION, because it s difficult to harmonize completely opposite strategies, such as alternative development and aerial spraying. 2. The tendency to direct an increasing part of EC aid to the Colombian government at the expense of civil society. Colombia does not have a problem of lack of resources, but of lack of political will to allocate them to the issues that should take priority (6.3% of GDP for military spending 12 ). The government s leadership does not need to be strengthened, as tends to be implied by the Paris-Accra agenda; rather, what needs to be strengthened is the balance of power within the state and between state and society, which can serve to limit the tendencies toward concentration of power in the current government. The powers that balance the government are the same sectors that are stigmatized by the central power: human rights defenders, critical journalists, political opposition, trade unionists, and within the state, the judiciary, especially the Supreme Court. In this regard, non programmable cooperation should be increased, because it is the only kind that ensures the strengthening of an independent civil society. EU cooperation will be deeply significant for the country to the extent that it promotes or contributes to promote real change. Civil society and social movements in all their diversity promote changes toward a democratic state, exercising citizen control over state actions, because government officials in many parts of the country impede democratic progress towards true rule of law, by maintaining alliances with obscure and mafia interests, or at least by permitting their actions. 12 ISAZA DELGADO, José Fernando, and CAMPOS ROMERO, Diógenes (16 July 2008), Quantitative considerations on the evolution of the conflict in Colombia, Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, Bogotá. 4

5 A concrete case of concern is the replacement of the Uprooted Peoples line of financing, which in Colombia was largely directed to civil society, for 50 million Euros within the NIP directed to the Colombian government. This change is unwise, because Social Action has a series of practices that contradict the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, and it acts jointly with the Army in conflict zones where the latter has been questioned by violations of human rights. Additionally, it is worrying that the Colombian government can exercise a decisive influence on the selection of projects within calls for proposals financed by the EU. The government's denial of the armed conflict and its exclusion of state victims from its definition of victims, as well as the labeling of the forcibly displaced population as economic migrants, could lead to the disqualification of proposals that meet EU criteria. III. CRITERIA AND CONDITIONS In the aid that the EU gives to the Colombian state, it is important to incorporate criteria and conditions that avoid a situation where public policies are contrary to and undermine the objectives of European cooperation, and that also serve to facilitate the tracking of the implementation of the aid. Among the criteria and conditions that could be used are the following: 1. National Plan for Territorial Consolidation. Although the civil and social presence of the state in all regions of Colombia is a priority for the EU and civil society, the strategic leap proposed by the national government to implement the National Plan for Territorial Consolidation 13 is in practice a civil-military strategy described in Plan Colombia II, to be coordinated through the Center for Coordination and Integral Action CCAI (for its acronym in Spanish), which as stated in presidential directive 001 of 2009 will be chaired by the Minister of National Defense and aims to "coordinate military and civic actions," which means, in practice, to subordinate the latter to the former. In the Colombian context, this leads to serious risks for the civilian population. The European Commission must ensure that the programs they finance do not enter in this scheme nor form part of its logic Paramilitary reintegration. Greater efforts and more precise criteria are needed to avoid strengthening the perpetrators at the expense of victims. For example, support for reintegration programs should be avoided until the process is clearly redirected in ways that favor the rights of victims. The European Commission should ensure that, implementing the conclusions of the Council of Ministers of 3 October 2005, aid is effectively directed to the victims and does not end up favoring productive projects that, for example, promote a forced reconciliation between victims and perpetrators. Special care should be taken to ensure that programs are developed in contexts where the 13 Presidential directive 001 of March 20, Currently in 11 Colombian municipalities, any Peace Laboratory coincides with the CCAI: North of Santander (II LdP): Abrego, La Playa and Ocaña. Meta (III LdP): Mesetas, San Juan de Arama, Puerto Rico and Vistahermosa (in these two municipalities the Phase II of the Forest Rangers Families Program is also being implemented). Bolívar (III LdP): El Carmen de Bolívar and San Jacinto. Sucre (III)LdP: Ovejas and San Onofre 5

6 criminal structures of perpetrators no longer exist, the communities and victims enjoy full security guarantees, and participation is strictly voluntary. 3. Aid to the internally displaced population. Supported programs should be consistent with the Guiding Principles: do not promote returns if the security, dignity and voluntary conditions are not met; and do not discriminate against or exclude some categories of displaced people, as happens in the case of Social Action which does not accept the registration of those displaced by paramilitary groups, by military actions of the armed forces or by aerial eradication of illegal crops. These issues, among other strict criteria, should be included in the texts that regulate the provision of EU assistance to the Colombian government. 6