24 January 2014 is the “Day of the Endangered Lawyer”. This year, the annual event focuses on lawyers in Colombia who receive death threats or have even been murdered because they defend the rights of the poorest, and who work on cases of human rights violations in rural areas where small-scale producers are attempting to return to lands illegally expropriated from them.
On Friday 24 January, lawyers all over Europe will protest in Ankara, Athens, Barcelona, Berlin, Bern, Bilbao, Brussels, The Hague, Hamburg, Istanbul, Izmir, London, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Rome, Seville and other cities. The “Day of the Endangered Lawyer” is a joint initiative of European Democratic Lawyers (AED-EDL, www.aed-edl.net) and the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and Human Rights (ELDH, www.eldh.eu), supported by several organizations, amongst which L4L, the European Bar Human Rights Institute (IDHAE, www.idhae.org) and the Colombia Caravana UK Lawyers Group (www.colombiancaravana.org.uk).
To mark the third “Day of the Endangered Lawyer”, Miguel Puerto, Colombian Human Rights Lawyer, will speak in The Hague on the serious risk situation for lawyers in Colombia, and the role that the international legal community can play in this situation.
Please click here for more background information on lawyers in Colombia. Click here for a provisional list of Colombian lawyers who were, in 2012-2013, threatened or even murdered.
