IMPACT deputy general secretary Kevin Callinan recently returned from an ICTU delegation to Colombia, the most dangerous country on earth for trade unionists. On his return he and ICTU president Brian Campfield had a letter, reflecting on the trip, published in the Belfast Telegraph.

In it they said they felt “privileged” to have been in the country during the “momentous week,” which saw the ratification of an historic peace deal between the government and the FARC group. But they drew attention to the massive “scale of the challenge that must be overcome” if the aspiration of the deal is to become a reality.

The authors offer some perspective on those challenges when they point out that Colombia is “a country of seven million displaced people, with 60,000 disappeared and 3,000 murdered trade unionists.”

Behind those statistics lies endless human suffering. They refer to the “countless testimonies” they heard of “assassination attempts, death threats, forced displacements and the persecution of community activists and trade unionists.”

One of the countless human stories the authors heard was that of the country’s best-known opposition figure: trade union leader Huber Ballesteros. They found him languishing in a jail cell despite not having been convicted of any crime. He did not have access to the basic medical equipment needed to manage his diabetes. Despite these horrendous conditions, they observed, his spirit remains undimmed.    

They end their letter with a call to action: “The international community has a particular obligation to step up its monitoring of human rights abuses and to urge action to be taken now against the attempts by Right-wing forces to thwart the agreement.”