Carlos Arturo Morales Mallorga
Carlos Arturo Morales Mallorga is a human rights defender, peasant farmer leader and current president of the Corporación Acción Humanitaria por la Convivencia y la Paz en el Nordeste Antioqueño (Cahucopana). In 2015 he was victim of a judicial set-up and imprisoned for 7 months in Palo Gordo prison in Santander department , until a judge annulled his trial and ordered his release in the absence of evidence. Carlos Morales and other members of Cahucopana have been beneficiaries of precautionary measures from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) since 2018.
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.
