Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent discussions he has had with his counterpart in Colombia on the UN Human Rights Council report on human rights defenders in that country, and if he will make a statement.
I spoke to Carlos Holmes Trujillo, the Colombian Foreign Minister, on 26 January at the UN in New York; and on 4 February at a Lima Group meeting in Ottawa. On 9 May the Minister of State for the Commonwealth and the UN, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, met with Colombian High Counsellor for Stabilisation, Emilio Archila, and directly raised the issue of human rights defenders. We regularly express our concern to the Colombian Government over the fate of human rights defenders, and work closely with civil society groups to bring individual cases to the government's attention.