Fernán Medrano
According to the Irish NGO Front Line Defenders, Colombia was the country where most social leaders were killed in 2019 and is the country with the most internal displacement, a record that has been set for four consecutive years from 2015 to 2019.
Consequently, the bloodbath of social leaders that concluded the year 2019 has continued into 2020, setting off alarm bells at the UN.
The spokeswoman for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said the agency is concerned about the persistent killing of social leaders in Colombia and urged the national government to intervene.
Nevertheless, it was reported that social leader Jorge Luis Betancourt was murdered on 13 January this year in the municipality of Montelíbano, in the department of Córdoba, in northern Colombia.
There was also news that indigenous and social leader Jáiber Alexánder Quitumbo was murdered in Toribío, Cauca, in south-western Colombia.
The social leaders are land claimants, victims of forced displacement, human rights defenders, working on manual substitution of illicit crops, etc.
It is not easy for social leaders and human rights defenders to live in a country where they are murdered.
Colombia is not only the worst of countries for human rights leaders, but it is also unlivable in terms of the reality that the numbers involve: In Colombia at least 20 social leaders were killed in the first 20 days of 2020.
