HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS The Ministry of the Interior announced the strengthening of the collective protection programme for human rights defenders from grassroots organizations and communities, who are often defending land and territory, increasing the target for the number of applicants to be covered by collective protection measures by the end of the year. The collective protection programme aims to prevent human rights violations and abuses against grassroots organizations and communities, identifying risk factors and adopting measures to prevent them from materializing or mitigate their effects. The programme coexists with individual protection programmes. In August, the National Commission on Security Guarantees approved a national policy for dismantling criminal organizations that, among other human rights abuses, have attacked human rights defenders. In September, the Ombudsperson’s Office issued a national early alert regarding the crisis of violence against human rights defenders. Despite the government’s measures to mitigate the risks to human rights defenders, violence against them remained at very high levels.1 According to the We Are Defenders Programme, there were 632 aggressions against human rights defenders up to September, of which 123 resulted in death. FORCED DISPLACEMENT Forced displacement continued to disproportionately affect Afro-descendants and Indigenous Peoples. UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, reported that up to November, 163,719 people had been forcibly displaced in Colombia during 2023. According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, citing OCHA, 45% of all displacement victims in 2023 were Afrodescendants and 32% were Indigenous Peoples. In May, 300 families, comprising approximately 1,500 people, most of them Afro-descendants or Indigenous Peoples, were forcibly displaced in the context of 136 confrontations between the National Liberation Army and the Colombian Gaitanist Self-Defence Forces armed groups in Sipí municipality, Chocó province. In July, authorities in Antioquia province reported that at least 53 families had been forcibly displaced from their homes in the municipalities of Segovia and Remedios because of confrontations between the same armed groups. VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW The Ideas for Peace Foundation reported a significant increase in forced displacements, forced confinements, massacres and killings of social leaders during the first year of Gustavo Petro’s presidency. Although several ceasefires were put in place during the year, their impact on the civilian population was limited. In October, the UN Secretary General informed the UN Security Council that the ceasefire between the National Liberation Army and the government, in place since August, had de-escalated the confrontation, but had done little to decrease the impact of the armed conflict on the civilian population. Between July 2022 and June 2023, the UN Mine Action Service registered 119 victims of anti-personnel mines throughout the country, including four children and 33 Indigenous and Afro-descendant people. In June, an anti-personnel mine perimeter set up by the Central General Staff armed group was reported in Nariño province. In May, the Ombudsperson’s Office called on the various armed groups to stop the illegal recruitment of children. The Coalition against the Recruitment of Children in the Colombian Armed Conflict registered 112 cases in the first semester of 2023. Armed curfews and community confinements continued, mainly because of fighting between armed groups in rural areas. In June, the Ombudsperson’s Office warned of an armed curfew enforced by the National Liberation Army in Chocó province, affecting nearly 5,000 people in the Nóvita municipality. UNHCR reported that as of The State of the World’s Human Rights