This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

id: 14143
date: 2/20/2004 17:20
refid: 04BOGOTA1748
origin: Embassy Bogota
classification: CONFIDENTIAL
destination: 
header:
This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.



----------------- header ends ----------------

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BOGOTA 001748 
 
SIPDIS 
 
GENEVA PLEASE PASS TO JEFF DELAURENTIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/19/2014 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PREL CO UNGA
SUBJECT: UNHCHR REPORT ON COLOMBIA 
 
Classified By: Charge Milton Drucker for reasons 1.5 (b&d) 
 
 ¶1.  (C) Summary:  The Office of the UN High Commissioner for 
Human Rights (UNHCHR) in Colombia is finalizing its report 
for Geneva on the GOC's compliance with its 27 human rights 
recommendations.   The report is likely to criticize the GOC 
for slow and uneven implementation of the recommendations and 
its refusal to implement two, or possibly three, 
recommendations.  Nevertheless, it will recognize that the 
GOC fulfilled one recommendation, accomplished substantial 
progress in another, and achieved varying progress in half a 
dozen others.  A group of foreign missions seeking to help 
the GOC fulfill the recommendations believes that UNHCHR's 
compliance assessment may give the GOC insufficient credit on 
several recommendations, and has encouraged the GOC to draft 
its own assessment for distribution in Geneva.  End Summary. 
 
 
¶2.  (C) The Colombia office of the UN High Commissioner for 
Human Rights (UNHCHR), under director Michael Fruhling, is 
putting the finishing touches on its evaluation of the GOC's 
compliance with 27 human rights recommendations made in the 
office's 2002 human rights report and issued in March 2003. 
The office will make public in early March its official 
report on the recommendations, prior to the UN Human Rights 
Commission's annual meeting in Geneva.  In meetings with 
foreign embassies, Fruhling has criticized the GOC for 
waiting too long to engage seriously on implementing the 
recommendations and for its uneven commitment to them.  The 
Ministry of Defense and Office of the Prosecutor General 
(&Fiscalia8) have been particular laggards, he maintains. 
Of the 27 recommendations, 20 are directed at the executive 
branch, four at the independent Fiscalia, and three at 
illegal armed groups.  According to Fruhling, the executive 
branch has fulfilled one recommendation, accomplished 
substantial progress in a second, achieved varying progress 
in half a dozen others, and rejected two or three. 
 
¶3. (C) Fruhling intends to propose in Geneva that the UNHCHR 
be given a mandate to develop a second set of 
recommendations, drawn from the current 27, that would guide 
his office's work for the next 12 months.  Colombian Vice 
president Francisco Santos, who has the lead on human rights 
within the GOC, would prefer to discard the current set of 
recommendations and replace them with more general goals that 
would allow greater operational flexibility.  According to 
Santos, the current recommendations place too much emphasis 
on taking bureaucratic steps and not enough on addressing 
fundamental human rights problems. 
 
¶4. (C) The European Union and some individual European 
countries have emphasized the need for the GOC to comply 
fully with the 27 recommendations, in some cases putting such 
a premium on compliance with the recommendations that they 
overlook real improvements achieved by the Uribe 
administration in reducing violence and human rights crimes 
in Colombia.  Many Colombian human rights NGOs critical of 
Uribe and his Government have vociferously advanced the view 
that the GOC's uneven compliance with the recommendations 
demonstrates a lack of commitment to human rights. 
 
¶5. (C) To assist the GOC with the implementation of the 
recommendations, seven embassies accredited to Colombia -- 
Brazil, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK 
and the U.S. -- have formed an informal working group known 
locally as the G-7.  Over the last two months, G-7 
representatives have met with Fruhling and Santos, both 
separately and together.  Predictably, these meetings have 
highlighted differences between the GOC's and UNHCHR's 
assessments of the Government's compliance with several of 
the recommendations. 
 
¶6. (C) Although Fruhling has declined to share an advanced 
draft of his report to Geneva with G-7 ambassadors, he 
provided the following oral snapshot to them on February 13: 
 
--The GOC has fulfilled the recommendation on anti-personnel 
mines (13). 
 
--The GOC has achieved significant progress in improving the 
effectiveness of the Early Warning System (1). 
 
--The GOC has made some, but still insufficient, progress in: 
protecting human rights defenders (2); increasing protection 
for communities at risk (4); implementing human rights 
training at the Ministry of Defense (8); and improving the 
public security forces' adherence to international 
humanitarian law (12).   (Note: The Embassy believes the 
UNHCHR report will give insufficient weight to the 
Government's extension of state presence throughout the 
country and success at reducing key indicators of violence, 
including against human rights defenders and communities at 
risk.  Virtually all the G-7 ambassadors criticized Fruhling 
for not giving the GOC more credit for the Ministry of 
Defense's human rights training.  Public security personnel 
continue to commit only a small fraction of human rights 
violations.  End note.) 
 
--The GOC has not assigned personnel from the Inspector 
General's ("Procuraduria") and Ombudsman's ("Defensoria") 
offices to all conflictive areas (5), although international 
funding had helped the GOC assign such personnel to many 
remote and problematic regions.  (Note: Fruhling gives the 
GOC insufficient credit for having representatives of the 
Ombudsman's office in all 33 of Colombia's departments.  End 
note.) 
 
--The Vice President has established a Special Committee (20) 
to advance investigations and prosecutions in select human 
rights cases, but progress in closing cases has been too 
slow.  (Note: The GOC had significantly advanced six of the 
one-hundred cases by the end of 2003, and hopes to have 
advanced another 15 cases by the end of February.  End note.) 
 
--Although the GOC is negotiating with several paramilitary 
organizations, neither the FARC nor the ELN are prepared to 
enter into dialogue with the Government.  It is essential 
that the GOC's negotiations with illegal armed groups be 
guided by principles of truth, justice, and reparations (14). 
 
--The Inspector General ("Procuraduria") has not taken 
disciplinary actions against all state employees who in any 
way jeopardized the work of human rights defenders (6).  In 
this regard, some public pronouncements from senior GOC 
officials have been unhelpful. 
 
--Although President Uribe has been clear on the need to 
sever the public security forces' links with paramilitaries 
(21), more actions need to be taken 
 
--The GOC has begun preparing a national plan of action on 
human rights (23), but has not given local governments and 
key sectors of society (read human rights NGOs) necessary 
input. 
 
--There have been positive discussions with the Ministry of 
Education on incorporating human rights education in the 
national curriculum (24) and providing human rights training 
to judicial entities (25), but little concrete progress has 
been achieved. 
 
--Although the Vice President's Office has worked 
productively with UNHCHR, the GOC as a whole has not taken 
sufficient advantage of the office's human rights expertise 
(26 and 27). 
 
--The GOC faces a major challenge in developing policies to 
narrow the economic inequality gap in Colombia (22). 
 
--The Ministry of Defense is resisting the requirement to 
suspend from duty public security force personnel implicated 
in serious human rights violations (19) by relying on what 
Fruhling believes is an erroneous reading of relevant legal 
codes. 
 
--The GOC made it clear, at the July 2003 London Conference 
and subsequently, its disagreement with recommendations 
calling for it not to adopt anti-terrorism legislation giving 
the military arrest powers (15) and for the independent 
Inspector General's Office ("Procuraduria") to inspect 
military intelligence files on human rights defenders and 
publish the results (7).  Fruhling maintains that the GOC 
agreed to these recommendations in March 2003 at Geneva, and 
is therefore bound.   (Note:  The Colombian Congress approved 
an anti-terrorism statute in December and will consider 
implementing legislation next session.   The UNHCHR is 
exploring with the Defense Ministry a possible compromise on 
the review of military intelligence files.  End note.) 
 
--The Prosecutor General's Office ("Fiscalia") only signed in 
November an agreement to work with UNHCHR, so no concrete 
results have been achieved on recommendations 3, 16, 17, and 
¶18. 
 
¶7. (C) During the past week, however, a majority of G-7 
representatives concluded at meeting with Fruhling that 
UNHCHR gives the GOC insufficient credit for compliance with 
some of the recommendations and that in others it demands 
that the GOC go beyond the language of the recommendations. 
In particular, the Dutch and Swedish Ambassadors, who are 
among the most conspicuous champions of human rights within 
the local diplomatic community, openly questioned whether 
Fruhling has been excessively demanding in his assessments of 
GOC compliance. 
 
¶8. (C) On February 18, Vice President Santos met with G-7 
ambassadors and excoriated the draft report Fruhling had 
shown him.  He said that the report was highly inaccurate in 
key sections; the GOC could accept damning assessments, but 
they should at least be accurate.  Santos claimed that he 
"did not know how to show the draft report to President 
Uribe."  He asked for advice. 
 
¶9.  (C) The Brazilian ambassador urged Santos to produce a 
GOC drafted human rights report, noting progress where 
warranted but admitting shortfalls, for the UN Human Rights 
Committee meeting in Geneva.  She was supported by the other 
G-7 ambassadors present.  The G-7 group then met at the Swiss 
embassy without Santos and came to the same conclusion.  No 
one had much confidence, including the Swedish ambassador, 
that Fruhling would modify his report before sending it as a 
draft to Geneva. Subsequently, the Swedish ambassador 
privately indicated to us that he is considering recommending 
that the GOS question the draft report's assessments in 
Geneva -- which would be a surprising development, given that 
Fruhling is a former Swedish diplomat. 
 
¶10. (C) Comment: The more critical stance of the G-7 
ambassadors regarding certain aspects of the UNHCHR Colombia 
office's report may not translate into a willingness to 
criticize it in Geneva.  It has, however, put Fruhling on 
notice that he runs such a risk.  End Comment. 
 
 
 
Butenis 

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