Legal challenges posed by the war on drugs and the fight against organized crime in Colombia (original) (raw)
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Colombian's new drug trafficking groups show us a violent scenario that must be carefully analyze. The level of violence and deathly consequences that can be attributable to them must make us pay attention of the law that is applicable to them and to the Colombian armed forces when they are acting against those groups. In Colombia, the government and authorities have admitted an easy position, establishing that these new groups –called BACRIM-are simply gangs or common delinquency, while they in many occasions act as something else. Accordingly, the purpose on this paper is to analyze the particular case of one of these groups in relation to the applicability of International Humanitarian Law rules of non-international armed conflicts, seeking to contribute to the discussion about which regulatory framework is applicable to this phenomenon.
Violence and criminality: two modalities found in the context of the Colombian armed conflict
Tempo, 2023
Colombia is among the countries with the highest levels of violence and crime in the world, despite the peace agreements between the State and different armed groups, including the FARC. This is partly due to the fact that the Colombian case is complex and multifaceted because of the variety of participants in the armed conflict context and due to the mutation of new actors, under the modality of organized crime. Based on the above, the objective is to study the Colombian reality, contextually and diachronically, from theoretical and epistemological elements to demonstrate how violence and criminality factors intersect in the context of the armed conflict. The study concludes, among other findings, that in Colombia the ambiguity and the multiplicity of terms used to name the emerging criminal groups presents a legal problem because of their hybrid composition and regarding their treatment within or outside of the armed conflict.
2013
The use of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) in the so-called War on Drugs has considerable implications for the application of international humanitarian law and raises concern about the respect for human rights under antidrug assistance programs. This article will focus, in particular, on the ways in which the lack of state control over PMSC activities poses a major challenge for human rights protections in the shortterm-by restricting the application of human rights law-as well as in the long-term-by further undermining state capacity and weakening the rule of law. Using the cases of Colombia and Mexico, this article will illustrate how PMSCs tend to add another dimension of complexity to complicated situations where the application of the rule of law is already uneven, increasing the risk of human rights violations and impunity.
Does the end justify the means? The FARC and drug trafficking as a related crime
The use of drug trafficking as the main funding source of The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) led to its consideration in the Havana peace talks. If its rebellion was financed by drug smuggling, this would compel the Special Jurisdiction for Peace to consider it as a related crime to political crime in the Final Agreement's framework, prompting the question, is it legally possible to consider drug-trafficking a related crime? This article is structured into five sections. The first, historically describes the context in which the armed conflict evolved. The second discusses the theoretical relationship between drug trafficking, international conflict, and international law. The third analyzes the concepts of political crime and related crime according to doctrinal debate. From a legal stance, the fourth validates if drug trafficking constitutes a related crime. From these, conclusions are drawn.
Law and Violence in the Colombian Post-Conflict: State-Making in the Wake of the Peace Agreement
Revista de Estudios Sociales, 2019
Colombia’s 2016 Peace Agreement with the FARC guerrilla extends beyond the end of the war and those measures for the disarmament, demobilization and reincorporation of former guerrillas. A large portion of the agreement is dedicated to the extension of the presence of the Colombian State into those areas of the country formerly under FARC control. The premise behind this extension, shared by Colombian elites as much as former guerrilla leaders, is that if the State remains absent then the areas will be occupied by criminal organizations interested in controlling the FARC cocaine trade, and, more generally, that the vast and sparsely populated territories will further descend into barbarism. This premise resonates with a long arc of persistent aspiration for a national identity that is shaped by the opposition between civilization and barbarism. Especially since the transformations effected by Colombia’s 1991 Constitution, the extension of civilization has been increasingly identified with the expansion of the rule of law and, therefore, with law’s mythical powers to order society and control barbarism. Under this premise, violence is equated to lawlessness and the remedy for violence assimilated to the expansion of the Estado social de derecho, the state form that embodies the rule of law in the Colombian Constitution. The foundational narrative of civilization versus barbarism, reflected by the hopes placed on the rule of law and the recipes for State-building by the 2016 Peace Agreement, continues to obscure the continuities between law and violence, and particularly the fact that the execution of legal institutions in formerly “lawless” territories maintains the violence of the moment of the adoption of legality. Both theoretical and empirical explorations of the present process of expansion of the Colombian State require critical examination of the hopes vested on law. A critical examination of this sort needs to engage with the continuities between law and violence explored in contemporary political philosophy and developed by Jean and John Comaroff’s ethnography. The productivity of this approach is highlighted by the essays in this dossier, which share the impulse to interrupt the foundational narrative of civilization and barbarism that remains in the institutions of Colombias’s present post-conflict endeavor.
Trends in Organized Crime
Recent scholarship has seen the peace agreement between Colombian government and the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) guerrillas a milestone in closing more than 50 years of internal armed conflict. Indeed, the traditional practice of subversive warfare between the two sides ended. However, this did not imply a true path to peacebuilding. The empirical and statistical evidence indicates the worsening of the conflict through the transformation of its practices and representations, into terrorism and transnational organized crime. This article contends that the FARC, as a political party, a new insurgent group, and a criminal actor, continues to have a main role.
Rebels at War, Criminals in Peace: A Critical Approach to Violence in Colombia
Rethinking Marxism, 2021
This essay explores the meaning and significance of the Colombian peace agreements reached by Juan Manuel Santos’s government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People’s Army (FARC-EP) on 24 November 2016 vis-à-vis a significant organizational shift within the national armed conflict and territorial dispute. By conducting a critical exposition of the armed conflict in Colombia, this essay contributes to the debate surrounding the (ex-)guerrillas’demobilization and disarmament, highlighting the relevance of ideology for analyzing changes in the dynamics of violence in the so-called postconflict.