A/HRC/24/6 8. The Vice-President announced that the Government had taken a unilateral decision to extend for three years the mandate of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia. Also, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had taken the decision to remove Colombia from the list of countries under permanent observation. 9. Regarding indigenous peoples, for the first time ethnic minorities had been consulted on three instruments that guaranteed their rights: the National Development Plan, the national guarantee programme and the legislation regarding reparation and land restitution. Also, the Government had defined specific policies guaranteeing the rights of populations of African descent to a collective territory, self-government and autonomy in their decisions, as well as on specific health and education policies. The signing of the law on combating all forms of discrimination was just one example. 10. One of the promoters of International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention No. 169, Colombia has been a pioneer in the right to prior consultation. In that connection, the Government had agreed with the OHCHR office in Colombia the establishment of a working group for the development of good practices on prior consultation. 11. For his part, the Deputy Attorney General stated that Colombia had the will and capacity to investigate and punish human rights violations. Its procedures were being strengthened to follow the model of international tribunals. Moreover, the International Criminal Court had considered the Attorney General’s Office as an example of positive complementarity. The strategy of investigating and prosecuting serious human rights violations had been changing and a new Unit of Analysis and Contexts had been established. 12. The security effort in the last decade had transformed the country. Colombians were more protected and lived more peacefully. A total of 87 per cent of the municipalities, comprising 86 per cent of the population, had not suffered a single act of terrorism in 2012. During the last decade, the homicide rate had been reduced by half and kidnappings by 95 per cent. The delegation highlighted the policy that favored demobilization and captures over deaths in combat. 13. Regarding military justice, Congress passed a constitutional amendment that excluded crimes against humanity, genocide, enforced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, sexual violence, torture and forced displacement from its jurisdiction and ordered that military justice should be independent, impartial and autonomous. The essence of the reform would enter into force only after Congress had deliberated on the law regulating the reform and once the Constitutional Court had reviewed the law. 14. Regarding the administration of justice, the delegation explained that the State had committed to allocating US$ 1.11 billion over the next four years for the implementation of the new oral system, the promotion of the independence of the judiciary and the acquisition of new technologies for the judicial process. 15. The delegation acknowledged that Colombia occupied the eighth place in Latin America in terms of prison overcrowding. To address this problem, the Government was implementing a plan to increase the capacity of prisons by 40 per cent over the next four years. 16. The core of the transitional justice system in Colombia was the rights of victims and the rights to truth, justice and reparation. The Victims and Land Restitution law was one of the tools for transitional justice. 17. Colombia had received recommendations requesting a reparations programme, even though the conflict had not ended. In response, a victims reparations unit, the Land Restitution Unit and the Center for Historical Memory had been established. Those three 4