Leonor María Paulina Riveros Dueñas

Partner

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Under the rules of public international law, the Colombian State has two fundamental obligations: to respect the human rights of persons within its jurisdiction and to guarantee the effective enjoyment of those rights. As a State Party to the American Convention on Human Rights and other international instruments, Colombia undertook the commitment to “respect the rights and freedoms recognized therein and to guarantee their free and full exercise to every person subject to its jurisdiction.”

Thus, the duty to guarantee is breached whenever the authorities have failed to provide what is necessary to prevent a right from being violated, in this case, to ensure that the right to life is not violated.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has already held the Colombian State responsible for failing to guarantee the necessary conditions for individuals to enjoy their fundamental right to life and for failing to adopt the necessary measures, despite having been aware of the extent of the threat.

The risk to Miguel Uribe Turbay’s life is indisputable; it is equally clear that the authorities of the Republic were aware of it, to the extent that more than 20 requests for reinforcement of his security detail have been made public, which was plainly insufficient in light of the level of risk to which he was exposed. All of these requests were denied. The weakness and inadequacy of the protection measures adopted by the Colombian State to protect Miguel were, unfortunately, confirmed by the fatal event that took his life.

Tragically, everything resulted in the materialization of the very risk that the authorities were supposedly attempting to prevent. In other words, it is clear that the Colombian State failed in its duty to guarantee the fundamental right to life of a human being who, in addition to being a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, was exposed to such a high level of vulnerability that the attempt to end his life took place, one might say, almost easily.

The consequence of a State’s failure to comply with its international duty to guarantee human rights is a declaration of the international responsibility of the State in breach. In this case, such responsibility would have to be declared by international human rights protection bodies, independently of the determination of the individual criminal responsibility of the perpetrators of the homicide at the domestic level, which, of course, must also be established in the tragic assassination of Miguel Uribe Turbay.

With regard to the exhaustion of domestic remedies by the State, that is, the determination of individual criminal responsibility, the judicial authorities have made significant progress, with more than 15 individuals having been linked to the proceedings, nine of whom have been deprived of their liberty and four of whom have already been convicted. The judicial record reveals horrifying circumstances: an extremely complex criminal network organized with a specific distribution of functions, together with compartmentalized information and the use of minors, involving different justice systems, including the juvenile criminal responsibility system, the ordinary criminal procedure applicable to adults, and the system of negotiated justice. Thanks to the diligent intervention of the State in this matter, the victims’ right to truth and justice is beginning to show meaningful levels of satisfaction.