When the first military leadership of the current national government was presented, an announcement that generated great expectation was made: the introduction of the so-called Human Security Policy. Five days after taking office, President Gustavo Petro stated that, in this new paradigm, success would lie “in substantially reducing deaths and massacres and substantially increasing people’s freedoms and rights” (2022).
These words should be remembered today, not only as an exercise in memory, but also to demand their fulfillment in the humanitarian crises that have arisen in the first half of 2025.
It is also necessary to make a critical assessment of the Total Peace policy. Furthermore, when eleven emergency hotspots identified by the Ombudsman’s Office in February this
year (Ombudsman’s Office, 2025a) coincide geographically with some of the territories where armed groups that are engaged in dialogue with the national government are present. Or that at some point were part of these processes, as is the case of the National Liberation Army, a group that no longer participates in dialogue scenarios and that considerably increased violence against human rights defenders between January
and June 2025, when compared to the victimizations that were also attributed
to this guerrilla group in the same period of the previous year.
