Bogota, Paris, The Hague, 25 April 2024. The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Mr Karim Khan, is in Colombia following his visit to Venezuela. He will initiate the Cooperation and Complementarity policy of the Prosecutor’s Office. He will also meet with the president of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), Roberto Vidal, and will accompany this jurisdiction to the department of La Guajira, where a group of soldiers will hold an ceremony of early recognition of responsibility for the extrajudicial execution of several Indigenous individuals belonging to the Wayuú people.
Over the course of 17 years, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective (CAJAR) transmitted information to the ICC Prosecutor’s Office about international crimes committed in Colombia. This contributed to the Prosecutor’s Office opening and maintaining a preliminary examination where it established that international crimes under its jurisdiction had occurred in Colombia.
Many crimes identified in the preliminary examination remain unpunished, while many of the top authorities who perpetrated them continue to enjoy impunity. Nonetheless, in October 2021, the ICC Prosecutor’s Office decided to close the preliminary examination of the situation in Colombia. The reasons for the closure were not clear and were not adequately conveyed to the victims and their representatives. This closure was reported solely via a statement and a press conference in which the reasons behind the closure were not detailed. Moreover, new international crimes have since occurred, such as the forced displacement of more than 400 Indigenous Wiwas in the Colombian Caribbean in February 2024.
In response to the closure, in April 2022, FIDH and CAJAR, representing Colombian victims of crimes against humanity, requested that the ICC Pretrial Chamber revoke the prosecutor’s decision and rule on the reopening of this examination for the sake of victims and in the interest of justice. The two organisations also requested that, at a minimum, the prosecutor be ordered to communicate to the victims the reasons behind the closure, since the information provided had not shed light on reasoning of his decision.
On 22 July 2022, Preliminary Chamber I of the ICC recognized that the Prosecutor’s Office had not sufficiently informed the victims and their representatives about the reasons for the closure of the preliminary examination, ordering the prosecutor to promptly provide additional information about the reasons for the closure to the victims and the representative organisations, who for more than 17 years transmitted sensitive information about the serious international crimes committed in Colombia.
More than a year after the chamber’s order, in November 2023, the ICC Prosecutor’s Office published a report in which it attempted to give the reasons for the closure of the preliminary examination. This report did not include any reference to what was ordered by the chamber, nor to the work carried out by the victims and their representatives before the ICC to clearly and adequately inform them of the reasons for the closure. Despite the fact that for 17 years they undertook hard work and many risks to transmit information to the ICC, the Prosecutor’s Office failed to convene a space for information and dialogue that would provide information about the reasons for the closure.
FIDH and CAJAR ask the ICC Prosecutor’s Office to convene a meeting with victims and human rights organisations within the framework of its visit to Colombia, and to provide information about the reasons for closing the preliminary. It would be regrettable if the prosecutor missed the opportunity to establish a dialogue with so many victims and organisations that for almost two decades had faith in the ICC’s mandate, and expected that it would provide an effective and respectful response.