Colombia on Friday rejected a decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to maintain the country on its human rights blacklist and called for the OAS body to analyze advances made “in the field.”.
“I invite them to analyze Colombia’s situation in the field and to hear the different spokesmen of civil society and the state,” Vice President Angelino Garzon said while on a visit to the country’s second largest city, Medellin.
According to Garzon, Colombia is “open to be examined and scrutinized by the international community” and blamed the country’s illegal armed groups for the majority of the violations of human rights.
The IACHR has maintained Colombia on its “black list,” due to continued concern over the country’s human rights situation, it said in the organization’s 2010 annual human rights report.
The report calls attention to countries in the Americas that need to improve in the human rights sphere, and was presented by current IACHR President Dinah Shelton (U.S.). Venezuela, Honduras and Cuba remained on the list as well, while Haiti was taken off due to the “special situation” confronted by the country.