Analysis: Colombia Overtures

In 2006, the Birmingham General Assembly considered a Commissioners' Resolution on Colombia that contained an endorsement of the accompaniment program as well as a number of policy points. The assembly passed most of the resolution, but referred the list of peacemaking advocacy items to the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) with a request to include a report in their next human rights update report. ACSWP has responded to this referral with a request for approval for all of the actions recommended by the original Commissioners' Resolution. These include diversion of military aid to humanitarian purposes, ending aerial fumigation of coca crops, and support for United Nations programs in Colombia.

Although this item is titled, "Report on Human Rights in Colombia," it is more than that, both because of the advocacy action items and because it also calls for suspending military aid to the Philippines, noting "the significant parallels between the pattern of violence in Colombia and the pattern in the Philippines, another major recipient of U. S. antiterrorism training and technology." Presbyterian Peace Fellowship moderator Roger Powers, a G.A. commissioner who participated in PPF's recent delegation to the Philippines, is drafting a commissioners' resolution on human rights in the Philippines. This C.R. will give the G.A. the option of addressing the two countries in separate reports.

An overture from the Presbytery of Chicago, "On Peacemaking in Colombia," contains very similar material, with the significant addition of strong opposition to the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. While election-year politics have kept this agreement from passing so far, we can expect to see it before Congress again. The overture's rationale provides an excellent briefing on the Free Trade Agreement's potential for additional declines in human rights in Colombia.

In their clear opposition to military aid of all kinds, both of these items implicitly reinforce the church's long-standing opposition to the particular form of military aid that involves bringing Colombian military personnel to the United States for training at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly called the School of the Americas. Last year, two events in Colombia emphasized the continuing risks of supporting the Colombian Army through this program. In August, two WHINSEC instructors from Colombia were arrested and charged with providing security and military support for one of Colombia's most notorious drug cartels. In May, a former paramilitary commander testified in a closed hearing that six of Colombia's highest ranking military leaders, including 4 generals, had aided paramilitary groups in training and logistics, and had incited and promoted paramilitary intervention in certain regions of Colombia. All six had received training in the United States at taxpayer expense.

Although General Assembly will be asked to consider little in the way of new policy on Colombia, it will have an important opportunity to recommit the church to the struggle for peace, justice, and human rights. Approving both the report and the overture will encourage the many accompaniment program volunteers and our partners in the Colombian Presbyterian Church who are working on these issues every day, often in dangerous conditions.