Annex 2: Terms of Reference

Colombia (Country Focus – Update 2025)

Reference period: December 2022-December 2025 (3 years)

The reference period will provide an update to the previous Country Focus report, which covered up to November 2022, and focused on Petro’s presidency. This update will cover a three year period and provide updates on developments during the Petro presidency.

Legal and political situation

Information on the main structures of the state; political developments, and demographic and migration trends:

• Demographics and migration profile

• System of government

  • Description of the state structure and form of government, including administrative structure, executive, legislative, judicial branches

  • Security forces

  • Integrity issues (corruption, abuses, etc)

• Political situation

  • Political developments within the reference period related to current government, implementation of the 2016 Peace Agreement, and Petro’s Paz Total plan

• Security situation and civilian impacts (20-25 pages)

Information on armed confrontations occurring, types of violence, how widely; main armed actors involved in confrontations; main areas affected by armed violence; conflict developments:

• Main criminal-conflict dynamics and drivers for the 2023-2025

• Illegal armed groups:

• Main structures, activities, and geographic presence

  • Paramilitary successor groups, including AGC

  • ELN

  • FARC dissident groups

  • Other criminal groups/organised crime groups/gangs

• Interaction dynamics between illegal armed groups

• Interaction dynamics with security forces

• Human rights situation and impact of violence on civilians

Information on main international legal instruments which the country is a party, ratification, and implementation of such instruments. Analysis of the main, general human rights issues, including those arising from the impacts of violence. Information on factors influencing a person’s capacity to relocate; ability to relocate within the territory in relation to tracking capacity of armed groups or other entities involved in targeting of profiles.

Information on torture, prison conditions, corruption and abuses by the State forces, as well as information on extradition treaties and the legality/use of the death penalty by the State should be included.

• International legal instruments

• Impact of armed violence on civilian population, especially by illegal armed groups

  • Social control

  • Homicides

  • Massacres

  • Extortion

  • kidnapping

  • Enforced disappearances

  • Anti-personnel mines, remnants of war, UXO

  • Attacks on health infrastructure

  • Displacement, including within urban areas

  • Confinement

• Other: Discrimination, torture, corruption, extra-judicial killings and abuses by state actors, prison conditions, death penalty

• Profiles

• Impact on Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities

  • Social leaders, human rights defenders, environmental leaders, and associated profiles

• Former members of the FARC-EP and people involved in the Peace Process

• Victims of extortion

• Journalists

• People involved in the justice system, including officials and witnesses

• Victims of sexual violence and GBV

• Children impacted by forced recruitment, confinement, displacement, and violence

• LGBTIQ people

• State response to human rights violations

Provide information on the mechanisms, measures and actions of the State available to respond to victims of violations, and witnesses (and family members), including State presence, capacity and effectiveness:

• Justice system (Reporting to police; use of judicial system; capacity and integrity)

• Early Warning System (SAT, Sistema de Alertas Tempranas)

• National Protection Unit (UNP, Unidad Nacional de Proteccion)

• Office of the Ombudsperson (Defensoría del Pueblo)

• Police and Attorney General’s Office (FGN, Fiscalia General de la Nacion)

• GAULA and anti-extortion/kidnapping units

• Access to justice/courts