3. Provide the displaced victims and their family members the necessary comprehensive
humanitarian care and security.
4. Make full reparations to the victims for the human rights violations established in the present
report. The measures must be orchestrated jointly with the affected parties and from their perspective.
5. Implement policies, programs and measures aimed at creating safe working conditions for the
human rights defenders in Comuna 13, as a fundamental guarantee ensuring that these events will
never recur.
6. Take measures in Comuna 13 calculated to promote a culture of human rights in which the
fundamental role that human rights defenders play is publicly acknowledged. The State’s commitment
to this policy must be reflected within all three branches of government: executive, legislative and
judicial.
7. Create the space for dialogue between the organizations that work on the defense of human rights
in Comuna 13 and high-level authorities, with a view to identifying policies, programs and measures
that can be adequate and effective in guaranteeing their security.
Apart from the need to obtain justice for the failure to comply with the recommendations contained in
the merits report, the Commission believes that this case raises issues of inter-American ordre public.
Specifically, the present case offers the Court another opportunity to address a situation involving connivance
and collaboration between the military and police forces, on the one hand, and paramilitary groups on the
other. The instant case involves poverty-stricken urban areas like Comuna 13 in the city of Medellín, where the
connivance and collaboration mechanisms have certain peculiar characteristics. The present case also raises the
problem of the heightened risk that human rights defenders face amid Colombia’s armed conflict, which takes a
particularly heavy toll on women human rights defenders. Here, the Honorable Court will be able to explore the
special and enhanced duties of protection that States have vis-à-vis women human rights defenders and its
international responsibility when it fails to discharge those duties.
Because the issues that this case raises have a significant impact on inter-American ordre public, in
keeping with Article 35(1)(f) of the Rules of Procedure of the Inter-American Court, the Inter-American
Commission will offer the following statements by the following experts.
An expert, whose name will be reported shortly, who will make a statement on the importance of
examining human rights violations like those committed in the present case, in the context of the specific
circumstances in which they occurred. The expert will detail the specific impact that these examinations of
context have on determining the full extent of the States’ responsibility and on getting at the truth and securing
justice. The expert will illustrate his remarks by describing the particular context in Comuna 13 in the city of
Medellín in 2002 and thereafter.
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