80 THE ADVOCATE
VOL. 80 PART 1 JANUARY 2022
More than 700 lawyers were killed in Colombia between 1991 and 2013.2
At least four lawyers were killed between 2017 and 2019.3 Threats were
made against at least eight lawyers between 2017 and 2021.4
While the 2016 Havana peace agreement ostensibly ended years of internal
armed conflict between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (“FARC”), lawyers and other human rights
defenders remain at high risk of illegal surveillance, threats, judicial harassment
and murder.5 More than 450 defenders have been killed in Colombia
since 2016.6 The estimates of murders of social leaders7 and human rights
defenders in 2020 range from 1828 to 310.9 For the second year in a row in
2020, the highest number of killings of land and environmental defenders
worldwide took place in Colombia, with 65 defenders murdered. Of the 65
cases, 41 were of activists involved in land rights protection.10
Risks to lawyers and defenders increased even more in 2021 during major
citizen protests that were triggered by a proposed tax reform that disadvantaged
lower- and middle-class people. The National Strike protests were compounded
by widespread concerns about high unemployment and growing
levels of inequality and poverty within the context of the pandemic, as well
as the Colombian government’s brutal response to the protests.
Despite COVID-19 restrictions, large demonstrations took place across
Colombia beginning on April 28, 2021 and continued for more than two
months, followed by further anti-government protests through the summer
and fall. The demonstrations were violently repressed by Colombian
authorities, and there have been numerous human rights violations, including
killings of social leaders, incidents of gender-based violence, arbitrary
detentions, and the excessive and brutal use of unlawful lethal force against
those exercising their fundamental right to peaceful social protest.11
Lawyers have been particularly challenged in their efforts to provide
legal representation to the victims of serious rights violations during this
time.12 For example, on March 4, 2021, human rights lawyer Johan
Sebastián Moreno Castro was arbitrarily and violently detained by police in
Piedecuesta while he was monitoring a protest.13 In late October 2021,