The high issue of murdered social leaders continues to dismay the country: 904 murders since the 2016 Peace agreement
° In 2020, there were 24.3 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in Colombia, the most leave since 1975, when there was a similar rate, and below that of other countries in the region.
° The issue of homicides was 12,018 in 2020, following the progressive decline recorded since 2002, only openly broken in 2012, when those murdered were 16,033.
° programs of study concludes that there is a relationship between the demobilization of the FARC and the consistent decrease in the level of violence that the country is experiencing.
Religious ceremony in Dabeiba in February 2020, after recovering the remains of a man who disappeared in 2002 [JEP].
report SRA 2021 / Isabella Izquierdo [PDF version].
MAY 2021-Colombia is gradually reducing its levels of violence, at least in terms of the homicide rate, which in 2020 fell to 24.3 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, the most leave since 1975. Although the drama of the murder of social leaders has overwhelmed Colombian society in the post-conflict management , the objectivity of the total figures speaks of a reduction in violent deaths. This decrease has been sponsored in the last years by the withdrawal of the armed struggle by the FARC and presumably has been favored in 2020 by the prolonged confinements established to face the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The country closed 2020 with 12,018 homicides, the most leave in decades, less than half the number of homicides that occurred in the early 1990s, during the harshest period of the armed conflict. At that time, issue homicides exceeded 28,000 per year, which constituted around 80 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. Since then, with slight upturns in 2002 and 2012, Colombia has been reducing its levels of violence and today its homicide rate is far from the records being set by other countries in the region: although in some cases the health emergency has also helped to lower the figures, in 2020 the highest fees were those of Jamaica (46.5 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants), Venezuela (45.6), Honduras (37.6), Trinidad and Tobago (28.2) and Mexico (27).
[In the case of Colombia, the authorities spoke at the end of 2020 of a rate of 23.79, although later homicide figures from the National Police and data of population give as result of the calculation the 24.3 for which we have opted here).
Conflict and post-conflict
While the ELN guerrillas remain active and several FARC dissidents are still engaged in criminal activities, around 8,000 former combatants were incorporated into civilian life as a result of the agreement Peace Agreement between the Colombian Government and the FARC, started to be negotiated in 2012 and signed in 2016.
The years prior to the beginning of the contacts saw an increase in violence, and then a steady decrease since then, not only related to the political conflict but also to criminality in general. When investigating the homicide fees during the years of the peace talks with the FARC, the Directorate of research Criminal and Interpol in Colombia showed a close relationship: when the armed confrontation increased or decreased, depending on the interests of the negotiators, so did the total number of homicides. The good progress of the negotiation marked a dynamic of de-escalation of the armed conflict, with a reduction of 8.57% in the homicide rate between 2012 and 2015.
In 2017, already signed the Peace agreement , violence in Colombia reached its lowest numbers in 30 years, with 12,079 homicides and a rate of 25.02 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. However, in 2018 the trend varied slightly (12,130 homicides), something that was pronounced in 2019 (12,667), which alerted about the need to quickly implement conditions for the reintegration of ex-combatants, improve security in demilitarized zones and increase state presence in the territory.
The Institute of Legal Medicine concluded that the homicide figures of 2018 seemed to evidence a reactivation of the Colombian armed conflict. For its part, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights presented in 2019 a report evaluating the human rights status in Colombia, with emphasis on the implementation of the contents of the agreement de Paz: the highest homicide figures were in Antioquia, Cauca and Norte de Santander, where the clashes for the control of illicit economies were more violent.
Effect of Covid
Post-conflict measures and the arrival of the pandemic, with its restrictions on movement, again led to a drop in homicides in 2020. In the period from March 20 to August 17, 2020, when the strictest confinements were in place, daily homicides per municipality fell, on average, by 16% from their pre-social distancing trend. In the weeks of full quarantine, the daily homicide issue even fell by about 40% from the pre-quarantine trend. As of June 2020, the issue of homicides returned to pre-health emergency trends. Crime dropped during the first months due to the fear of contagion, but quickly returned to the usual figures, especially in terms of robberies and thefts, when the economic status worsened and the need for food increased among the low-income population. However, because of what happened in the first semester of the year, Colombia closed 2020 with thehighest homicide rate leave in the last 46 years.
A clear negative of 2020, however, was the continuation of violence directed against social leaders and ex-combatants. Last year 297 local leaders were killed, bringing the total number of social actors killed from 2016 to February 2021 to 904. In the same period, 276 former guerrillas were killed, most of them involved in appearances before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace.
