Colombia

NOVANEWS The ICRC asked the Colombian government to implement more effective measures to prevent further disappearances. U.S. Navy Adm. Kurt Tidd, commander of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), escorts Colombian President-elect Ivan Duque at the command’s headquarters in Doral, Fla., July 14. Photo | SOUTHCOM By teleSUR  The ICRC asked the Colombian government to implement more effective measures to prevent further disappearances. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has urged the new Colombian government to search for the over 83,000 people who disappeared in the country, in commemoration of the International Day of the Disappeared, which takes place every Aug. 30. The head of the ICRC delegation in Colombia, Christoph Harnisch, has highlighted that “The new...

NOVANEWS BY: Amy Goodman Democracy Now! In Colombia, right-wing politician Iván Duque has been sworn in as Colombia’s new president. Duque was hand-picked by former right-wing President Álvaro Uribe and has vowed to roll back key parts of Colombia’s landmark peace deal with FARC rebels. Just before Duque’s inauguration, Democracy Now! spoke to Gustavo Petro, who placed second in this year’s presidential race, receiving 8 million votes in his attempt to become Colombia’s first leftist president. In the 1980s Petro was jailed and tortured for being a member of the M-19 guerrilla movement. He later went on to lead efforts in Colombia’s Congress to investigate ties between paramilitary death squads and top politicians. TRANSCRIPT AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!...

NOVANEWS By Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno A member of FARC's Sixth Front on guard with his weapon in a demobilization camp in the final days before they hand in their arms back to the government on December 28, 2016, in Miranda, Colombia. (Photo: Kaveh Kazemi / Getty Images) Amidst the horror of the internal Colombian war, Maria McFarland Sánchez-Moreno finds that individuals can have an impact on exposing the toxic truth of gruesome massacres and torturous deprivation. In There Are No Dead Here: A Story of Murder and Denial in Colombia, Sánchez-Moreno singles out three people whose heroic efforts made a difference in a brutal time. The following excerpt is about one of those persons, investigative journalist Ricardo Calderón. "Have you ever seen someone be eaten alive by ants?" The q...

NOVANEWS Community leader killings in Cauca, Nariño and Choco are related to land conflicts, while those in Bajo Cauca are related to illegal mining. By: teleSUR   An estimated 170 Colombian social leaders were killed in 2017, up from 117 in 2016, according to the Institute of Studies for Peace Development, Indepaz, a Colombian non-governmental organization. “The rise in homicides is over two main conflicts: (access to) land and (natural) resources. This latter refers to the rentiership in illegal mining and cultivation of illicit crops,” said Indepaz director Camilo Gonzalez Posso. The report indicated that the murders are highly localized to four regional departments: Nariño (28), Antioquia (23), Valle (14) and Choco (12). There were 32 assassinations alone in the community ...

NOVANEWS Labor Minister Griselda Janeth Restrepo Gallego says the state is starting a nationwide campaign to raise awareness of child labor. | Photo: MinTrabajo Many families are still sending their offspring into dangerous environments, where those children are then used to smuggle illicit goods. Child labor in Colombia fell from 13 percent in 2011 to 7.8 percent in 2016, but with more than 850,000 minors still working the streets, the government has acknowledged that the country must work together in order to eradicate the issue. RELATED: 80% of Sexual Abuses in Colombia Affected Minors "Although the rate of child labor has been reduced significantly in Colombia, there are still 869,000 children working in the country: this is a huge and monstrous figure t...