Colombia

The State Duty to Protect Human Rights

Inter-institutional coordination [page 10]

The State has multiple public policies affecting business activities from various fields (regulation, monitoring, penalty, support, etc.). Consistency is required between such activities and the inclusion of a common human rights protection and respect based approach. Such inter-institutional coordination will aim at defining shared objectives for all related competent entities harmonically, having coordination mechanisms, courses of action, room for discussion, training resources, among others. To such end, the Task Force on Business and Human Rights must become the entity to guide and coordinate the action of the State.

This inter-institutional coordination must not only address the consistency of national policies (horizontal), but also their implementation in the territories (vertical) in particular. It is necessary to grant a relevant role upon local governments in this Plan, strengthening them so they can thus embrace a new human rights agenda. The implementation of this Plan requires an effort for the training of government servants in the national and territorial entities, addressing their specific characteristics to improve the learning management and ensure the continuation of this approach into the future.