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Andean Group - March 2018 (ISSN 1741-4466)
Growing concerns over the murder of social leaders in Colombia
Colombia might have registered its lowest murder rate in four decades last year but attention has been increasingly focused on the rising number of murders of social leaders. This would seem to be an unintended consequence of the peace deal signed in 2016 between the government led by President Juan Manuel Santos and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) guerrilla group. ‘Social leaders’ is a catch-all media term that includes leaders and representatives of trade unions, human rights organisations, environmental and land rights groups, community pressure groups, and political parties. It is also a term that has become loaded with political connotation; under former president Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), social leaders were often linked in Uribe’s rhetoric to being sympathetic to the country’s leftist guerrillas, leading to increased risks and stigmatisation.
