The International Independent Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in Law Enforcement on Thursday found that racism against individuals of African descent in Colombia is still deeply embedded in the country’s institutions, creating a sense of fear among youth in the community.
The findings, which come in a report issued after an eleven-day visit to several major cities, illustrated how young people of African descent routinely had to face discriminatory treatment when dealing with law enforcement. For instance, stop and search practices, which are often initiated based on vague criteria such as ‘fitting a description’, ‘anti-gang requisas’ or behaving in a ‘suspicious manner’ without evidence, were systematically applied to youth of African descent.
To date, the publication of comprehensive statistics on the frequency and outcomes of stop and search incidents involving youth, disaggregated by age, ethnicity, location, and justification, remains unavailable. This absence of publicly accessible data has become a central point of critique among rights organizations alike, leading to other instances of racial profiling, such as the usage of excessive force, being subjected to cruel treatment while in detention, and extortionate fines, being swept under the rug.
Although the UN has commended the Colombian government for its recognition of the existence of structural racism in the country and its efforts to address the issue, such as reformulating guidelines on the usage of police force in managing social protests and prioritizing civil dialogue over confrontation, the independent body stressed that there is still much to be done. The prevalent racism in the country has affected Afro-Colombians in many different facets of their life, such as being forced to live through economic marginalization, territorial displacement, and being targeted by non-State armed groups and criminal organizations.
The living conditions that individuals of African descent were subjected to were so precarious that they led to a landmark civic strike in 2017, which forced officials to offer solutions to their predicament. Despite constituting 26% of Colombia’s 40 million people, Afro-Colombians remain one of the country’s most marginalized groups, even as they are formally protected under Law 70, commonly referred to as the ‘Law of Black Communities.’ Enacted in 1993, this monumental legislation promised Afro-descendant populations protection from racial discrimination, the right to preserve and govern their territories, and the promise of improved socioeconomic development.
In principle, this law recognizes the rich history of individuals of African descent and the pivotal role that they play in Colombia, but in reality, the current climate of violence that they are forced to live through paints an entirely different picture.
