CAHUCOPANA Humanitarian Action for Coexistence and Peace in Northeastern Antioquia
Cahucopana is an organisation form with around 150 people that since 2004 has been persistently denouncing human rights violations and strengthening and articulating the peasantry in defence of the territory of the Northeast of the department of Antioquia. Cahucopana currently benefits more than three thousand people in the region and because of their human rights work they have faced a high risk of criminalisation and threats.
In 2019, the organisation was recognised as a subject of collective reparation by the Unit for the attention and comprehensive reparation of victims, to compensate for the harm suffered during the conflict.
The last couple of years of a peace process has raised hopes for an end to the decades long conflict that has plagued Colombia. However, the negotiations between the government and the FARCs have not had a significant impact on the safety and security of human rights defenders in the country, which remains one of the countries with the highest rates of killing of HRDs in the world. This situation seems to have deteriorated in 2015 with the UN highlighting the alarming number of HRDs killed, with 69 between January and August 2015, while the number was 35 for the same period in 2014.
