Reports

The 110-page report, “Neglected in the Jungle: Inadequate Protection and Assistance for Migrants and Asylum Seekers Crossing the Darién Gap,” is the second in a series of Human Rights Watch reports on migration via the Darién Gap. Human Rights Watch identified specific shortcomings in Colombia’s and Panama’s efforts to protect and assist people – including those at higher risk, such as unaccompanied children – as well as to investigate abuses against them.

The 127-page report, “Left Undefended: Killings of Rights Defenders in Colombia’s Remote Communities,” documents killings of human rights defenders in the country in the last five years, as well as serious shortcomings in government efforts to prevent them, protect defenders, and hold those responsible to account. Over 400 human rights defenders have been killed in Colombia since 2016, according to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

This report documents violations by the National Liberation Army (ELN), the Patriotic Forces of National Liberation (FPLN), and a group that emerged from the demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Abuses including murder, forced labor, child recruitment, and rape are often committed as part of the groups’ strategy to control the social, political, and economic life of Arauca and Apure. Impunity for such abuses is the rule.

This report documents killings, disappearances, sexual violence, recruitment of children as soldiers, and forced displacement by the National Liberation Army (ELN), Popular Liberation Army (EPL), and a group that emerged from the demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Armed groups use threats to gain control, including against community leaders and human rights defenders, some of whom have been killed. Venezuelans who fled the humanitarian emergency in their country are among the victims. 

This report shows how flaws in the demobilization of FARC guerrillas – and in their reincorporation into society – helped prompt the formation of these new dissident groups. These groups, including United Guerrillas of the Pacific and the Oliver Sinisterra Front, now batter urban neighborhoods and rural hamlets of Tumaco. These groups have engaged in scores of killings in Tumaco, contributing to a dramatic spike in homicide rates.

This 95-page report presents evidence strongly suggesting that numerous generals and colonels knew or should have known about false positive killings, and may have ordered or otherwise actively furthered them. Prosecutors are investigating at least 3,000 of these cases, in which army troops under pressure to boost body counts in their war against armed guerrilla groups killed civilians and reported them as combat fatalities. Hundreds of lower-ranking soldiers have been convicted, but just a handful of colonels and no generals.

This 184-page report documents killings, death threats, and new incidents of forced displacement committed against displaced Colombians in relation to their efforts to recover their land.

This 101-page report documents how recent improvements in Colombia’s laws, policies, and programs on rape and domestic violence have not translated into more effective justice, healthcare, and protection for displaced women and girls. More than half of the country’s roughly four million displaced are female.

This 122-page report documents widespread and serious abuses by successor groups to the paramilitary coalition known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC). The successor groups regularly commit massacres, killings, forced displacement, rape, and extortion, and create a threatening atmosphere in the communities they control.

This 140-page report assesses Colombia’s progress toward investigating and breaking the influence of paramilitaries’ mafia-like networks. It also describes government actions that pose serious obstacles to continued progress.