Communicative action and human rights in colombia when words fail
Alison Brysk
Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the University of California, Irvine, United States.
en
By the 21st century, in most of Latin America a phased combination of international and civil society pressure has produced notable if incomplete human rights reform. Yet in Colombia, continuing assassinations, kidnappings, forced displacement, and torture have received limited international attention and met with a checkered state response. This essay will argue that the symbolic structure of the violations and political environment in Colombia, above and beyond material and institutional constraints, diminish civil society’s impact and state responsiveness. Communicative action and its failures are the key to the persistence of abuse and lag in international response in Colombia. Specifically, we will trace problems in the definition of rights, identification of victims, legitimacy claims of the state, discourse of causal attribution, and transnational communication dynamics.
human rights, international relations, communicative action, constructivism, comparative Latin American politics
La acción comunicativa y los derechos humanos en colombia cuando las palabras fallan
Para el siglo XXI, en la mayoría de Latinoamérica, una combinación de presión internacional y de la sociedad civil ha producido una reforma notable, si bien incompleta, por los derechos humanos. Sin embargo, en Colombia, asesinatos continuos, secuestros, desplazamiento forzado y tortura han recibido atención internacional limitada, y han tenido una respuesta Estatal mesclada. Éste ensayo argumentará que la estructura simbólica de las violaciones, y el ambiente político en Colombia, más allá de limitaciones institucionales o materiales, disminuyen el impacto de la sociedad civil y la respuesta del Estado. La acción comunicativa y sus carencias son la clave a la persistencia del abuso y la demora en la respuesta internacional en Colombia. Específicamente, rastrearemos problemas en la definición de derechos, identificación de victimas, reclamos de legitimidad del Estado, discurso de atribución causal, y las dinámicas de la comunicación transnacional.
derechos humanos, relaciones internacionales, acción comunicativa, constructivismo, política latinoamericana comparada
“In times of war, the law falls silent…” Cicero
36-49
01/01/2009
01/01/2009
https://doi.org/10.7440/colombiaint69.2009.02
The “prescriptive status” stage of the n the 21st century, the era spiral model of human rights reform. of the international human In this model, a phased combination rights regime, Latin America of international and civil society pres is generally deemed to have reached suring leads to an acknowledgement of human rights norms by target states, along with initial reforms and com pliance improvement (Risse, Ropp and Sikkink 1999). Yet in Colombia, continuing assassinations, kidnappings, forced displacement, and torture have received limited attention and met with a checkered state response. In 2006 alone, more than 770 civilians were assassinated or disappeared, while over 200,000 were forcibly displaced. A portion of U.S. aid, temporarily sus pended due to human rights concerns including paramilitary linkswith public officials, was quickly restored (AI 2007). The Colombian government, while disbanding paramilitary groups and initiating limited prosecutions against military and civil leaders impli cated in the killings, has failed to sig nificantly prevent impunity or provide sustainable security in rural areas—or to stem the remobilization of an esti mated 3,000 to 9,000 paramilitary fighters (ICP 2007). Moreover, dozens of members of the Colombian Con gress are in jail or indicted for links to the paramilitary groups (Romero 2008a). The stagnation of principled reform in Colombia can be seen in the contradictory response to the recent 2008 grassroots peace marches that attempted to transcend the conflict, only to be met with government con demnation of the movement’s motives and affiliations, followed by a renewed wave of violence against human rights advocates and civil society organiza tions[1] (Gómez Maseri 2008).
Yet Colombia possesses all of the ingredients for change predicted by comparative study of human rights reform. Colombia is a democratic regime, relatively visible to international media, sufficiently developed to gene rate a stable civil society, and possesses the potential leverage point of U.S. aid. While Colombia is a U.S. ally and trade partner, the hegemon is less invested in repression than it was in Central Ame rica during the 1980s, and the U.S. has a positive interest in suppressing vio lent actors linked to the drug trade. A plethora of human rights organizations have formed in Colombia, including transnational coalitions, and the United Nations has had a strong presence via the High Commission on Refugees, the High Commission on Human Rights, UNICEF, and other programs since the early 1990s. But human rights mobi lization has been less effective than in peer states such as the Southern Cone or even Andean neighbors like Peru— where violence was framed as political rather than criminal. In fact, the current Colombian government has tried to restrict civil society organizations and successive regimes have attempted to depoliticize the violence.
This essay will argue that the symbolic structure of the violations and political environment in Colom bia diminish civil society’s impact and state responsiveness. Although there are ample material constraints on human rights reform, what distinguishes Colombia from similarly situated zones
of insecurity which have received grea ter response is hearts and minds, not guns and butter. The power of words in the Colombian conflict, for good and evil, is signaled by the government’s response to the peace movement’s challenge: verbal condemnation and labeling that signals elitesupported nonstate actors that civil society advo cates are a legitimate target of violence, which is followed by assassinations and attacks on unionists, human rights organizations, and NGOs.
Communicative action and its failures are the key to the persistence of abuse in Colombia. In general, analy ses of transnational social movements and political campaigns increasingly emphasize the role of symbolism and “information politics” in transforming states and global institutions (Keck and Sikkink 1998). In our age, the language of rights is a predominant parameter of political discourse (Bob bio 1996)—human rights discourse is a form of communicative action (Li 2003). Constructivists suggest that communicative action can transform world politics through the power of persuasion (Risse 2000). But we must also analyze when and why words fail. As a communicative action, human rights claims must be articulated by legitimate social actors, reflect recog nizable and governable social proces ses, and reach a relevant transnational audience. When any of these semantic elements are lacking, words fail. Fur thermore, human rights are a counter hegemonic claim (Brysk 1995), that must contest and deconstruct reig ning paradigms of sovereignty, states of exception, and neoliberal autonomy from social structure. Rights speak of universality, indivisibility, and inaliena bility can fail to overcome the domi nant discourses of dehumanization of victims, blurring of responsibility, and national insecurity.
Human rights have emerged as a theoretical normative constitution for the global world order, an emerging consensus affirming the inalienable dignity and moral equality of indivi duals (Donnelly 2007). The principle of human rights limits the exercise of authority to bounded, legitimate forms of coercion and deprivation, generally assumed to be in the State’s control. Beyond the universal protection gran ted to all individuals regardless of citi zenship, human rights norms propose special protection for vulnerable popu lations such as immigrants, women, and children. An “international human rights regime” of United Nations bodies led by a High Commissioner for Human Rights, human rights courts and commissions in regional organiza tions, government human rights offices and ambassadors, international NGOs, transnational legal processes, posttran sition tribunals and investigations, and local social movements combine to offer a panoply of modalities for inter vention in cases of abuse against human dignity (Forsythe 2006; Mertus 2005).
What do previous studies on the responsiveness of human rights networks, at the local and global level, tell us about the determining factors of the impact on the mobilization against human rights abuse, and the role of communicative action in this process? The success of civil society advocacy will be influenced by a range of material and normative factors at both international and domestic levels, including the role of hegemonic states, international institutions, international persuasion, national regime type, and domestic factions. Within the limits of these domestic and international power configurations, civil society seems at its most effective when it works in tandem with transnational networks to frame local problems in terms of globally legi timate norms (Cardenas 2007).
Many authors trace limita tions of human rights campaigns to the needs of state sovereignty, and the resistance of strong authoritarian sta tes to international intervention. In this interpretation, members of the “club of states” use their legal stan ding and physical authority to block transnational monitoring and leve rage (Donnelly 2007). Related factors include the authorities’ perception of a threat to national security, use of rules of exception, and the conse quent mobilization of a proviolation constituency (Cardenas 2007)—all of which are highly relevant to Colom bia, while influenced by the discourse of sovereignty and narratives of fear and authority (Brysk and Shafir 2007). The logic of chronic counter insurgency often inspires security forces to further victimize civilians, partly to justify their own standing and performance, in part to enact the “social cleansing” agenda of social eli tes in violent and unequal societies. In Colombia, hundreds of marginalized civilians each year have been murde red by troops and falsely claimed as combat casualties (Romero 2008b).
Others focus on the availability of transnational links to global civil society. According to Keck and Sikkink, the key determinant is the existence of international issuenetworks around relevant human rights issues (Keck and Sikkink 1998). For Clifford Bob, it is the ability of domestic human rights organizations to “pitch” their cause to international gatekeepers that is believed to influence issue salience and ultimate success (Bob 2002). In Colombia, transnational connections are present, but they were established decades later and less forcefully than in other Latin American cases, for reasons explored below.
In the reflection of Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink, the effect of international networks depends on the presence of, and their connection with, domestic civil society. Social movement theorists examine the globalized resources, opportunities, and framing of human rights NGOs (Tarrow 1998). Generally speaking, civil society’s capacity for resistance to repression is connected to “social capital”—networks of rapport and trust (Putnam 2002). Yet others argue that social capital is a neutral resource that can be turned to organize death squads as easily as NGOs, and insist on a focus on the purposes and norms of civic life (Armony 2004)—suggesting greater focus on civil society’s politi cal culture and normative orientation.
In either version, it could be noted that Colombia’s history since La Vio lencia destroyed social capital.[2] Both the authorities and challengers have promoted a singularly zerosum par tisanship, reminiscent of Argentina’s historic Peronistmilitary divide that blocked significant human rights advocacy until the appearance of familybased groups in the late 1970s (Brysk 1994a). While such nonpar tisan family or Churchbased human rights movements transnationalized and transcended the militaryguerrilla divide in some of Colombia’s Latin American neighbors, the first wave of human rights advocacy in Colombia was tightly linked to the national poli tical left, and therefore seen as illegiti mate in a Cold War environment.
The nature of the violations may also facilitate or impede recog nition, framing, and mobilization. Historically recognized violations such as genocide carry moral autho rity, international legal reaction, spe cialized international institutions and NGOs, and leverage against the sovereignty defense. The Uni ted Nations’ mandate for humanita rian intervention, the International Criminal Court, and many bilateral mechanisms specify “genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.” Meanwhile, chronic violations of social and economic rights are more controversial, difficult to measure, and lack issueoriented networks (Felice 2003). Violations against women and children are prosecuted more vigo rously than similar behavior against male victims (Carpenter 2006). Tate notes the importance of the frame change from drugrelated to political violence in persuading the UN High Commission on Human Rights to appoint a Permanent Representative for Colombia (Tate 2007).
In a broader sense, the study of symbolic politics and constructivism suggests that political communication requires the following elements: legi timate speakers, a coherent narrative, and an appropriate audience. The suc cess of political communication can influence the more structural factors of sovereignty, social capital, and trans national ties. The state’s discursive stra tegy and perceived international role affect its status visàvis the internatio nal human rights regime (Brysk 2007). The narrative of human rights viola tions fosters or hinders civil society in framing, claiming, and forming collective identities around human rights (Brysk 1995). Transnational ties are established through the communi cative processes of identification with the Other, clear causal narratives of injustice and redress, and “branding” of locations and victims (Brysk 2000; 2005). Recognition of human rights violations in Colombia is founded on precisely these grounds.
The struggle for human rights in Colombia appears to have rea ched a “glass ceiling”; after a phase of initial recognition and pressured reforms, ongoing violations are only sporadically discussed and have been normalized in the international cons ciousness. Colombia’s political envi ronment is peculiarly impervious to transnational pressure due to the nature of the state, the genre of viola tions, the quality of civil society, and distorted transnational relationships.
Moreover, recent governments have learned to semantically manipulate and diminish human rights accoun tability by taking advantage of these discursive features of the Colombian experience (Tate 2007). Responding to the U.S.’s concern with conti nuing killings of union members and the arrest of his cousin and political confidante on charges of sponsoring paramilitaries, President Uribe res ponded that, “Colombia is not in the time of crisis, but in the time of remedies” (Romero 2008a). In a fur ther illustration of this dynamic, since the prospective Colombia trade pact with the U.S. hinges in part on the international public perception of Colombia’s human rights record, the Colombian government has invested millions of dollars in U.S. public rela tions firms and Congressional trips to promote its image (Lipton and Weis man 2008).
The Colombian state is discur sively constructed as sovereign, despite significant shortfalls in authority and citizenship (McLean 2002). Since the international human rights regime— like all international law—operates when “domestic remedies have been exhausted,” the presumption of sove reignty sets the bar for intervention high. The Colombian government claims to be both too strong to warrant international intervention, and too weak to exercise full control over paramilitary and guerrilla violence. Thus, Uribe downplays both human rights conditions and risk assessment claims over trade and uses continuing violence to argue for more U.S. aid, stating, “We need association with the United States, not to hide our pro blems, but to help us in solving them” (Romero 2008a). While the indefinite postponement of the free trade agre ement with the U.S. is a partial res ponse to these concerns, there have been no significant longterm cuts in U.S. military aid; an investigation of a 2007 wave of civilian killings shows that almost half of the military units involved were financed by the United States (Romero 2008b).
The predominance of nonstate actors in the Colombian conflict blurs the boundaries between counterinsur gency, drug trafficking, law enforce ment, warlord, and vigilante practices. The pattern of covert or unstructured armed violations within a democra tic and sovereign state leans toward the use of international humanitarian law (of war) rather than international human rights law and its associated standards and mechanisms. However, the chronic and internal nature of the Colombian conflict, as well as the pre valence of nonstate actors, compli cates the application of this genre of laws of war (Rodley 1993). For exam ple, in Colombia, over 130,000 legal private security contractors patrol urban streets, rural lands, and multi national facilities, exceeding the offi cial armed forces of around 100,000 (Garay 2003). An estimated majority of the latest massacres are committed by paramilitary groups and most kid nappings by guerrillas; despite official military involvement.
Moreover, as a democratic sove reign state, Colombia is shielded from pariah status or from being pressured for regime change. The internatio nal human rights regime is backsto pped by a transnational network for democracy promotion, with its own crosscutting NGOs, international institutions, stalwart support from strong states, and reinforcing regio nal nodes in Latin America (Santa Cruz 2005). As Tate 2008 notes, even symbolic U.N. sanctions are usually used on a countryspecific basis, only against dictatorships. Southern Cone human rights movements of the 1980s faced illegitimate military dictators hips, while ethnocratic countries like South Africa or Serbia that systema tically disenfranchised identitybased groups are now generally stigmatized. By contrast, Colombia’s free elections, impressive Constitution, and well developed judicial system generate admiration, confusion, and “plausible deniability” from a variety of interna tional observers. Colombia’s citizens have strong rights in a weak state— somewhat like receiving an impressive settlement of a lawsuit drawn on a bankrupt account.
Within this political envi ronment, the kinds of violations in Colombia are extremely difficult to capture in a human rights narra tive context. Despite the equal moral worth of all victims and types of suffering, we can easily observe that some kinds of victims and violations receive greater political attention and generate a more emphatic response from concerned audiences. Keck and Sikkink 1999 posit that violations are more readily recognized when they involve “acute bodily harm to inno cent victims,” which is difficult to identify in a chronic and diffuse civil war characterized by significant cross cutting criminal activity. “Private wrongs” by nonstate actors stretch the human rights frame developed for government and political dissidents— the Amnesty International “prisoner of conscience” model that established the human rights regime (Brysk 2005). As far as root causes, the narrative of longterm social injustice is trum ped by a story of immediate national insecurity that articulates well with dominant narratives generated by the hegemon: from the Cold War to the War on Drugs to the War on Terror. Colombian elites consciously mani pulate these frames; Uribe recently claimed that “In Colombia, we have not insurgents against dictators… We have terrorists against democracy” (Romero 2008a).
Colombia also suffers from a strategy widespread throughout the repressive forces to derail political communication: killing the messen ger. Despite the dedication of coura geous local reporters, the targeting of journalists by all parties to the conflict has diminished coverage of Colom bia, and made it more dependent on scarce foreign correspondents. In a 2005 report, Reporters Without Bor ders concludes that in areas of perse cution, threats and killings produce a climate of “anxiety and circums pection among the remaining jour nalists…. ‘We are very passive in our work,’ several have said” (RWB 2005). Within Colombia, journalists are fur thered hindered by government per secution and military influence over mainstream outlets (Brittain 2006). From late 2003 through 2004, Pre sident Uribe denounced NGOs and human rights monitors as “terrorists,” leading to international concern that they would be targeted by paramili taries. International attention to the War on Terror has further displaced reporting on all other conflicts and of Latin America in general.
On the international level, sto ries of suffering are assessed by refe rencing to regional and historical baselines (Brysk 1994b)—tragically, the world has learned to depreciate violations from perpetually troubled or exceptionally brutal zones. An abuse which would generate hea dlines in a neighboring or peer country may not even be reported when coming from Colombia. If it is reported, political violence in Colombia is more frequently descri bed by dominant international media as war, crime, or terror—rather than a violation of citizens’ rights by poli tical authorities, or their delegated surrogates. As one small illustration of this trend, a search of the New York Times index since 1981 showed 99 stories using the term “human rights” in Colombia—compared with 140 labeled as “human rights” regar ding Colombia’s much more tranquil neighbor Ecuador.
Within Colombia, civil society is communicatively delayed in gene rating speakers as well as narratives on human rights. Colombia has not created charismatic figures or cause célèbre that has spearheaded suc cessful human rights movements, such as Argentina’s Madres de Plaza de Mayo or Brazil’s Chico Mendes. Very recently this may be changing with the international campaign for Ingrid Betancourt, a maternal figure, martyred opposition politician kid napped by the guerrillas. It appears to be more difficult to construct a collective identity around Colombian civil society’s struggle for peace and neutrality than to advocate a prin cipled opposition political program, in the manner of cause célèbre like Nelson Mandela or Aung San Su Kyi. Although Tate 2008 discusses the successful deployment of professio nal identities by Colombian jurists in the international human rights system, comparative analysis suggests that highlevel sustained interna tional attention requires a symbolic presence—not just information and principled appeals. One counter vailing source of evidence for this analysis of Colombian civil society is the isolated success of Colombia’s identitybased indigenous groups such as the U’wa and Kogi in recei ving international recognition, with highly visible symbolic representati ves (Ulloa 2005).
These same communicative cha racteristics impede transnational links. The nature of violence in Colombia discriminatingly blocks transnational communication. First of all, violence is directed at foreigners at a relatively high rate, which discourages direct monito ring and exchanges of solidarity. Fur thermore, some civil opposition forces and even some international advocates have been slow to distinguish them selves clearly from violent militants whose tactics are condemned by trans national entities; this distinction was one of the fundamental elements for international support for South Africa’s antiapartheid movement. Crimina lized elements of guerrilla forces fur ther cloud the potential for mainstream transnational publics to identify with the Other; Colombia is no Davidand Goliath style Chiapas rebellion, as the FARC forces have increased its drug trafficking and kidnappings markedly since the 1990s.
Moreover, the prevalence of internal displacement over internatio nal refugees has diminished the avai lability of the refugee networks that helped to build human rights advo cacy for the Southern Cone and even Central America—they are present for Colombia but at a much lesser degree and later than similarly situated groups. Internationally displaced Colombians appear to be more frequently middle class professionals seeking “exit” than political exiles who raise conscious ness in their new homes. Internally displaced persons are by definition less visible than international refu gees; Tate describes a breakthrough 1997 incident in which IDPs received recognition in the words of a foreign diplomat who registered Africanloo king concentrated waves in terms that this group “really looked like refu gees” (Tate 2007).
Finally, the perennially pro blematic interpenetration of social and political rights struggles is much more difficult to articulate in democratic, developed Colom bia than in dictatorial and impove rished Central America. The social roots of Colombia’s conflict are much more about inequity than absolute poverty—resourcerich, middleincome Colombia has one of the highest levels of inequality in the Western hemisphere, with a GINI Index of 58.6 according to the World Bank. Once again, this com plicates the establishment of a clear and cognizable human rights narra tive. At the same time, as the recent identification of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez with the FARC demonstra tes, a sector of the Latin American left conflates populist banditry with antiimperialist or socialist struggle, further muddying the waters.
The first requirement for an effective response to human rights abuse is that rights must make sense (Brysk 2007). Given the communica tive characteristics of the Colombian experience, how can we improve civil society’s international perception?
As in the case of Latin America’s indigenous peoples, human rights networks alone will not suffice for the complex matrix of violations and victims in Colombia (Brysk 2000). Therefore, we must construct broader channels of communication that transcend specific violations, establish attentive constituencies and foster empathic with atrisk populations. This implies increasing crosscutting coalitions with envi ronmentalists, religious communities, and other universalist social sec tors beyond dedicated human rights monitors. Institutionally, promoting the deepening of democracy, judicial reform, and refugee protection net works can bolster weak State capa bilities and build outward from the core human rights agenda to related issues with their own international networks. The involvement of inter national entities further builds trans national social capital with foreign citizens who are institutionally situa ted in their own states.
Within the human rights net work itself, a related form of broade ning relationships is the international human rights community’s growing awareness of Colombia’s peculiar posi tioning, and increasing willingness to attempt to reframe and preempt vio lence rather than the traditional reac tive, casebycase approach. Thus, we now see reports tracking the reemer gence of paramilitaries, joint com muniqués condemning the Uribe administration’s labeling of NGOs as terrorists, and links to free trade with the U.S. as situational patterns that may contribute to future abuse.
Second, as in the era of Latin American dictatorships and the contemporary U.S. counterterror regime, we must deconstruct the concept of “Dirty Wars”. This means dismantling the politics of fear pro moted by the Colombian state and reinforced by the U.S. Accurate and transparent threat assessment and counterinsurgency logic can lead away from abuse when national secu rity is democratized (Brysk and Sha fir 2007). Like community policing, the best legitimate defense is the construction of an autonomous civil society. In this regard, the emerging peace movement in Colombia has the potential to create a collective identity that will serve as a source of mobilization, a legitimate point of reference, and a bulwark against the cycle of violence. International support for this sector should be complemented by more academic research and dialogue on humane and alternative security.
The struggle against “pri vate wrongs” in Colombia seems to require a search for new mechanisms to apply leverage, where transnatio nal pressure on the state does not avail. “Follow the money” strategies of financial accountability (Brysk 2005) could undercut the coercive authority of some of the predatory contenders. U.S. financial sanctions against Colombian paramilitaries listed as terrorist groups are a good first step. Similar campaigns by civil society and international institutions to “just say no” to dirty money have achieved some traction over corrup tion in some developing regions, and more specifically in the regulation of blood diamonds (Tamm 2002). As an illicit good, cocaine is not susceptible to the certification mechanism—but coffee is, and “fair trade” mechanisms already exist for Colombia’s leading legal product.
Finally, we must ask what the shortfalls of human rights demands in Colombia reveal about the global ina dequacies of the international human rights discourse. Rights discourse that does not address legitimate public fears of insecurity will fail until advocates a thoughtful vision of the recons truction of democratic authority. As Cardenas reminds us, “Human rights norms must be supported by a wide range of groups within civil society, not just committed activists… One of the most basic if overlooked functions that advocates of international norms can play, therefore, is to help define a viable alternative future” (Cardenas 2007, 56). Along other lines, the inter national regime must expand public understanding of the links between longterm social rights and immediate civil rights violations, which is the lea ding dynamic of abuse in contempo rary Latin America (Brysk 2008). In addition, human rights advocates and scholars must continue to insist that elections are necessary but not suffi cient in and of themselves for demo cracy. The international community can continue to expand the vocabulary of issue types and logics of interde pendency, beyond the legallyderived human rights repertoire. In the case of Colombia, the conceptual innova tions of “internally displaced persons” and “humane security” have special potential to articulate violations that do not fit the classic human rights and refugee modes of international law (Hampson 2002).
Rethinking rights is the first step towards improving their salience in hard cases like Colombia. When the law falls silent, it is time to raise your voice.
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[1] In the spring of 2008, tens of thousands of Colombians protested against all forms of violence by state and nongov ernmental forces. This culminated a series of increasing citizen and victim repudiations of guerrilla kidnappings for the past decade. But because the spring 2008 marches included left and former guerrilla participants and explicitly critiqued government abuses, Uribe administration spokesmen questioned their impartiality and linked them to “subversion.” Im mediate paramilitary attacks on some of the organizations condemned by the government followed.
[2] La Violencia refers to Colombia’s decade of civil conflict between 1948–59 that killed an estimated 300,000 and displaced millions in fighting between guerrilla and paramilitary forces of the Liberal and Conservative parties. Guerrilla violence resumed under different auspices by the late 1960s, and escalated notably during the 1980s with an increase in drug traf ficking and the formation of selfdefense and later paramilitary groups. This violence also eventually displaced millions of citizens and physically destroyed public spaces and social networks.