In order to finance their military operations, both the FARC and the ELN engage in the widespread and systematic practice of kidnapping civilians for ransom, which, under the rules of international humanitarian law, is considered hostage taking. Fundación País Libre, an NGO that studies this phenomenon, calculates that over 1,500 people were taken hostage by the guerillas between January and September of last year, a figure that represents 61% of the total number of abductions that occurred in Colombia in 2000. Of those abducted, 165 did not survive the ordeal.

This practice is taken to extremes when the guerrillas engage in mass hostage taking; scores of men, women, and children are kidnapped at the same time and held for ransom. Last year, the ELN rounded up and kidnapped 60 victims at one highway roadblock, three of whom subsequently died in captivity. In April 2001, the ELN, which in the past has hijacked an airplane and interrupted church services in order to capture victims, abducted 100 employees of Occidental Petroleum, an American oil company. Most of the victims were subsequently released.

One FARC commander recently interviewed by Human Rights Watch dismissed international humanitarian law as "a bourgeois concept." Bourgeois or not, the intentional killing of civilians and hostage taking are war crimes under the applicable norms of international law. These actions may also constitute crimes against humanity if perpetrated in a widespread or systematic manner, as appears to be the case with kidnapping civilians for ransom. The repeated massacres and regular political assassinations carried out by both guerrilla groups may also rise to the level of crimes against humanity, though it is less clear that the guerrillas’ practice in this respect meets the elevated threshold required for such crimes.

IV. Impunity, Accountability and the Quest for Peace

As terrible as it may seem, most of the perpetrators of international crimes in Colombia may never be brought to justice. Impunity in that country has long hovered at nearly 100% for violent crimes, especially those committed in the course of the war. The weakness of the Colombian judicial system makes the prosecution and punishment of paramilitary or guerrilla offenders relatively rare. Military commanders implicated in massacres and other international crimes are repeatedly shielded from sanction by the military justice system, which either absolves them of all wrongdoing or issues an administrative slap on the wrist. This wall of impunity blocks the judicial system from reaching the worst offenders. Although Carlos Castaño, leader of the AUC, has multiple arrest warrants pending against him (at last count it was 22), he has met regularly with national and foreign officials, granted numerous interviews to the press, and moved about the country seemingly at will.

Although there is as yet no international mechanism that can ensure accountability, the recent establishment of specialized tribunals designed to process international crimes is an encouraging sign of positive change. The most significant of these is the International Criminal Court ["ICC"], created by the Rome Statute in 1998 (the ICC is not yet formally in existence because the Rome Statute, itself a treaty, has not yet been ratified by a sufficient number of countries). Colombia has signed the Rome Treaty, which is currently under study for ratification by the Colombian Congress. It is not farfetched to think that, at some point in the not too distant future, there may be an international court charged with bringing to justice the perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Colombia.