COLOMBIA: Harassment and surveillance of lawyer Sofía López Mera
21 March 2025
The Observatory condemns the harassment suffered by lawyer Sofía López Mera on social networks for defending the Pubenense indigenous community of San José de Julumito.
The Observatory also condemns the persistent surveillance of the lawyer due to her representation of the national movement of mothers and women for peace.
Lawyer Sofía López Mera is one of the coordinators of Corporación Justicia y Dignidad (CJD), which specialises in representing and supporting victims of human rights violations in Colombia.
Since June 2023, she has been representing the interests of the indigenous community of San José de Julumito, which is in a critical situation at the hands of the real estate company Asoinca-Provitec in the town of Popayán. This conglomerate has dispossessed the community and taken over hundreds of hectares of rural land, carrying out a process of rural gentrification that has devastated the peasant and indigenous population, generating abrupt cultural and environmental changes.
Human rights lawyer Sofía López Mera and leaders of the Pubenense community have been repeatedly harassed by the company Asoinca Provitec on social networks for defending the community’s rights. The lawyer also denounced the surveillance carried out by the company’s security forces right up to her son’s school.
She also represents the “Movimiento Nacional de Madres y Mujeres por la Paz” (National Movement of Mothers and Women for Peace), which denounces the forced recruitment of children and adolescents before the Members States of the United Nations Security Council in New York. Sofía López Mera has gathered information on the forced recruitment of minors in the departments of Cauca, Nariño and Valle del Cauca, systematising around 200 cases in south-west Colombia since 2023. This work has led to a significant increase in the number of cases of surveillance, shadowing and threats against the lawyer by illegal armed groups operating in the region.
The most recent incident occurred last January, when members of the FARC Jaime Martínez dissident group arrested her bodyguard and asked him to inform her that she “should stop working now” and that they wanted them to withdraw the precautionary measures granted to the minors they had tried to recruit..
The International Observatory for Lawyers in Danger is utterly concerned about the safety of lawyer Sofia López Mera. She is not the first, nor will she be the last, to be the victim of threats and harassment for practising her profession, as shown in the report of the 7th International Caravan of Lawyers in which the OIAD participated. She has benefited from protection measures at national level which, according to her, do not meet her needs.
The Observatory strongly condemns the harassment of lawyer Sofía López Mera because of her profession.
The Observatory urges the Colombian authorities to take all necessary measures to guarantee the safety and physical and psychological integrity of lawyer Sofía López Mera.
The Observatory urges the Colombian authorities to ensure compliance with the United Nations basic principles on the role of the Bar, in particular principles 16 and 17 :
“Governments shall ensure that lawyers (a) are able to perform all of their professional functions without intimidation, hindrance, harassment or improper interference; (b) are able to travel and to consult with their clients freely both within their own country and abroad; and (…).” (Principle 16)
“Where the security of lawyers is threatened as a result of discharging their functions, they shall be adequately safeguarded by the authorities.” (Principle 17)
