Bogotá, Mexico City, Paris, 25 February 2021. We, Idheas, Strategic Human Rights Litigation, the “José Alvear Restrepo” Lawyers’ Collective, Cajar and the FIDH - International Federation for Human Rights – today launch the “Together Against Impunity” campaign to raise awareness of the crimes against humanity that have been committed and that are still being committed in Mexico and Colombia, such as forced disappearances and extra-judicial executions, and also to help to overcome the structural impunity in both countries.
Almost all these crimes remain unpunished, whilst the victims continue to fight to find their loved ones, to obtain justice and to learn the truth about these events. We are today joining forces to require the Mexican and Colombian States to recognise the existence of crimes against humanity and to meet their international obligations to guarantee truth, justice and reparation, in order to overcome the profound pain that these events have caused and to ensure that they are not repeated.
As part of the campaign, we are launching the juntascontralaimpunidad.org website, where the reader can learn of the situation of impunity in the two countries and also the activities that we are implementing with a view to fighting this calamity.
At the same time, we are launching a petition for the Prosecutor’s Office of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate crimes against humanity in Mexico, by starting a preliminary examination, and to continue to investigate them in Colombia, where an examination has been taking place for 16 years.
Impunity hurts all of us. In Mexico, there are more than 80,000 disappeared people and 50,000 unidentified bodies. In Colombia, at least 80,000 people have been victims of forced disappearance since the 1980s and 6,402 were executed extra-judicially, between just 2002 and 2008, according to official data. These crimes are still happening, sheltered by the structural impunity in both countries. We, the victims and society, need to know who gave the order, so as to dismantle the responsible entities once and for all.
Add your voice: join in the demand for justice so that these crimes stop happening. Let us fight together against impunity.
Sign the petition at: change.org/juntascontralaimpunidad