Colombias substantive and procedural laws

Country Profile Assignment

Substantive and Procedural Law

For this week’s country profile, you are going to investigate the major procedural components, including gross human rights violations, of your selected country.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: Have fun! Apply what we talked about in class to your project. Look up some outlandish or crazy news stories, high-profile events, etc. that are relevant to the week’s material.

• Look up the US Department of State’s “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2016.” View the profile for your selected country. Are there any violations of procedural safeguards that regularly occur in the country? Try looking under the prison/detention center, arbitrary arrest or detention, arrest procedures and treatment of detainees, trial procedures, and other relevant sections. Relate what you find back to the US constitutional amendments or the international standards for human rights.
• After identifying some of the major problems, provide your opinion of why those problems occur based on what we talked about in class and the handouts I provided. For instance, we know that Civil Law countries that use an inquisitorial system of justice have long investigation periods that result in lengthy pre-trial detention.

In addition to the Department of State website, feel free to use whatever other resources you would like to. News articles would be great for this week, because there are (for example) a lot of high profile cases around the world of people being detained for years without bail. In all cases, you MUST CITE YOUR SOURCES APPROPRIATELY.

Requirements:

MLA format

minimum of 2 pages of information and maximum of 3, 1 work cited page

country for this topic: Colombia