A/HRC/43/3/Add.3 recorded 46 cases, OHCHR documented 30 killings of representatives of community action councils in 2019. 22. Killings of women human rights defenders increased by almost 50 per cent in 2019, compared to 2018. On 5 January, in Magdalena, an Afro-Colombian woman who was defending land allocation and the rights of forcibly displaced women was killed because she had denounced the presence of a criminal group. Prompt and effective implementation of the Comprehensive Programme of Guarantees for Women Leaders and Human Rights Defenders17 should serve as an important tool for prevention and protection, and for the investigation of attacks against women human rights defenders. 23. In 2019, the country’s Foundation for Press Freedom (Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa) registered 113 threats and 360 attacks against media workers. OHCHR documented the killing of two journalists in Arauca and recorded attacks against journalists in Bogotá, Cesar and Magdalena. 24. In 2019, several mechanisms, such as Round Tables for Life (Mesas por la Vida), the Life Leads campaign (Campaña Lidera la Vida) and the Summit for Social Dialogue, explored how to better protect human rights defenders and build consensus on key challenges. Colombia has a legal framework to prevent and address attacks against human rights defenders. However, coordination among State institutions – particularly between those at the national and the regional levels – to ensure the full implementation of this framework, remained a serious challenge. The Timely Action Plan, initiated by the Ministry of the Interior in December 2018, was developed to improve such coordination. To increase the effectiveness of this plan, broader and more sustained participation of regional authorities and civil society should be prioritized. 25. Colombia maintained other mechanisms relevant to the protection of human rights defenders. The National Commission on Security Guarantees should be more regularly convened in order to fulfil its full role pursuant to the peace agreement, particularly concerning the dismantlement of criminal groups that succeeded the paramilitary organizations and were often responsible for killings of human rights defenders. The Intersectoral Commission for Rapid Response to Early Warnings should sharpen its focus on human rights defenders, especially by defining coordinated and concrete measures to implement actions based on recommendations from the Ombudsman’s early warning system. 26. The National Protection Unit, of the Ministry of the Interior, made significant efforts to respond to the extraordinarily high demand for individual protection measures. Still, the measures granted were not always adequate in the rural contexts in which most human rights defenders were killed. In 2019, six human rights defenders were killed in rural areas of Cauca, Chocó, Nariño and Risaralda, despite protection measures. Prevention and early warning should be prioritized over temporary, individual and reactive protection measures, which do not address the structural causes behind the attacks. 18 27. OHCHR highlights the need to increase collective protection measures. Such measures constitute a prevention mechanism, inasmuch as they seek to address risks faced by communities and organizations, through the coordination of different authorities, in order to advance human rights guarantees. The 2019 budget for collective protection measures represented merely 0.22 per cent of the budget of the National Protection Unit, and even then, the implementation of collective protection measures was often hampered by coordination issues between national, departmental and municipal institutions. 28. OHCHR appreciated the efforts of the Office of the Attorney General to investigate the cases that it had reported, and noted some progress in 55 per cent of those cases, all of which had occurred between 2016 and 2019.19 However, challenges persisted in regard to the prosecution of intellectual authors of attacks against human rights defenders. 17 18 19 See https://colombia.unwomen.org/es/noticias-y-eventos/articulos/2018/06/comunicado-programagarantias. See https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=23518&LangID=E. The accused had been convicted in 16 per cent of the cases, 20 per cent were at the trial stage, indictments had been issued in 7 per cent of the cases, and a valid arrest warrant had been delivered in 11 per cent of the cases. 5