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Colombia: Government
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Colombia is divided into 32 departments and one capital district which is treated as a department. There are in total 10 districts assigned to cities in Colombia including Bogotá, Barranquilla, Cartagena, Santa Marta, Tunja, Cúcuta, Popayán, Buenaventura, Tumaco and Turbo. Colombia is ... subdivided into some municipalities which form departments, each with a municipal seat capital city assigned. Colombia is also subdivided into corregimientos which form municipalities. Each department has a local government which is headed by a department governor and its own department assembly elected for a period of four years in a regional election. Each municipality also headed by a municipal mayor and a municipal council.
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Since 2003, paramilitary groups, responsible for the vast majority of human rights violations in Colombia for over a decade, have been involved in a government-sponsored "demobilization" process. More than 25,000 paramilitaries have supposedly demobilized under a process which has been criticized by AI and other Colombian and international human rights groups, as well as by the OHCHR and the IACHR. The process is lacking in effective mechanisms for justice and in its inability to ensure that paramilitary members actually cease violent activities. »Readmore
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[T]he largest guerrilla group in Colombia, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), expressed interest in discussing an exchange of its hostages for imprisoned guerrilla members. Talks on this issue were cancelled after a bombing in October 2006 for which the government charged the FARC was responsible.
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A supreme court investigation exposed paramilitary links to members of Colombia's congress and other politicians, with widespread links revealed in N Colombia; several members of the congress were arrested in late 2006 and 2007. The foreign minister resigned because her brother, a senator, was one of those arrested in Feb., 2007. In Mar., 2007, a leaked CIA report linked the chief of the army to paramilitary death squads that had operated in 2002; the general denied the charge. Testimony from a former paramilitary warlord in May accused the current vice president and defense minister, former government officials, and military leaders of ties to and support for the paramilitaries, who were used to fight drug cartels and leftist rebels. In May, 12 generals were forced to resign after revelations of illegal wiretaps on political leaders and government officials. Revelations about government and military ties to the paramilitaries, the rebels, and the drug dealers continued during the summer; in July, several senators, including Uribe's cousin, became the subject of an investigation into paramilitary links.
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In its September 2001 report, "The 'Sixth Division': Military-Paramilitary Ties and U.S. Policy in Colombia", the group details the alleged ties between the Colombian army and the right-wing paramilitaries. "Colombia's army has five divisions, but many Colombians told Human Rights Watch that paramilitaries are so fully integrated into the army's battle strategy, coordinated with its soldiers in the field, and linked to government units via intelligence, supplies, radios, weapons, cash and common purpose that they effectively constitute a sixth division of the army," Human Rights Watch reported.
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Analysts and critics inside Colombia agree that there has been a degree of practical improvement in several of the mentioned fields, but the exact reasons for the figures themselves have sometimes been disputed, as well as their specific accuracy. Some opposition sectors have criticized the government's security strategy, claiming that it is not enough to solve Colombia's complex problems and that it has contributed to creating a favorable environment for the continuation of some human rights abuses.
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