12. The Committee expresses its grave concern at the persistence of serious violations of human rights, including extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances, torture, rape and recruitment of children for use in the armed conflict. The Committee emphasizes the serious lack of statistics and concise information on the number of cases of torture and related investigations. The Committee notes the particular vulnerability of certain groups, such as women, children, ethnic minorities, displaced persons, the prison population, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons.
The Committee is concerned at the lack of criminal investigations and the slow progress of existing investigations, since many of them are still at the pre-investigation stage, thus contributing to continued impunity for serious human rights violations (arts. 2, 3, 6, 7, 24 and 26).
The State party should ensure that prompt and impartial investigations are conducted by the competent authorities and that human rights violations are punished with sentences appropriate to their seriousness. The State should provide the Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Unit with additional resources in order to speed up its work. The Committee underlines the importance of the cases concerned being assigned to that Unit.
The State must also strengthen security measures for justice operators and for all witnesses and victims. The State party should establish a centralised system making it possible to identify all serious human rights violations and to properly monitor their investigation.
Link to full text of the report: Concluding Observations-CCPR-Colombia-2010-eng