In mid-October, an IPU delegation went back to Bogota to meet both authorities and victims and resume last year's talks. Discussions centred on the investigations into the murders of members of Congress, strengthening security for parliamentarians at risk, and ensuring full respect for those under trial. The mission, led by the President of the Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians, Senator Rosario Green (Mexico), came shortly after a new Congress and Government had taken office in Colombia.

Colombia's Peace and Justice Law continues to be central to developments in each of these situations, albeit in different ways.  This Law, adopted in 2005, offers lenient prison sentences to demobilised paramilitaries if they make full confessions. In many instances it has helped to unravel the circumstances of their crimes.  There are now several leads pointing to the responsibility of paramilitary groups for the murder of parliamentarians and to the possible implication of state authorities and, more generally, revealing the political support these groups enjoyed.  

Yet the "justice and peace process" has not been without controversy.  First of all, the Peace and Justice Law itself has many flaws. Critics of its underlying philosophy or the way it has been implemented - including members of Congress - continue to be at risk. Demobilised paramilitaries, who have violated Colombia's laws in the most horrendous way, do not naturally make for credible witnesses and yet are extensively relied on to bring criminal cases against members of Congress.  The IPU has been very concerned by the fact that it is the same Court which both investigates and tries these parliamentarians, and that there is no possibility of appeal. 

However, legal protection for members of Congress is not just at stake in criminal proceedings.  Only days before the IPU delegation reached Bogota, Colombia's Procuraduría, a uniquely Colombian institution, through a disciplinary sanction and in the absence of a criminal conviction, debarred Senator Piedad Córdoba from holding public office for 18 years in the belief that she worked with and promoted Colombia's largest guerrilla group, FARC.

The current criminal and disciplinary procedures applicable to members of Congress fuel the fears that parliamentarians in Colombia are under undue scrutiny.  They come at a time when the Colombian Parliament needs to be able to make its voice heard in the face of the increasing dominance of the Executive and the Courts. The IPU will continue to assist the Colombian Congress in overhauling legislation so as to ensure adequate and effective legal protection for its members and, in a limited number of cases, to dispatch trial observers to help press for respect for fair trial. It will also continue to monitor the investigations into the murder of parliamentarians and encourage the authorities to see it that those at risk are adequately protected.   A full mission report will be shared, as a first step, with the authorities and the victims, and made public at the next IPU Assembly in Panama (April 2011).

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