«Il n‘y a pas un monde développé et un monde sous-développé, mais un seul monde mal développé»
HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL
43rd session
In October 2019, presidential elections were held in Bolivia to choose the country’s new president for the period 2020-2025. These elections resulted in a constitutional breakdown and the seizure of power by an interim government led by the self-proclaimed Jeanine Añez, supported by the armed forces. The break-up has led to a situation of high levels of violence, repression and human rights violations; the massacres that have taken place remain unpunished to this day.
In addition, a deliberate strategy of political and judicial persecution has developed against anyone who expresses ideas contrary to the new government. This persecution is still a reality today, particularly in the context of the organisation of new elections scheduled for May 2020.
On the occasion of the 43rd session of the UN Human Rights Council, CETIM invited to Geneva the Bolivian lawyer Nadesdha Guevara, defender of the victims of the conflicts of November 2019 in La Paz (the Senkata massacre). The CETIM gave the floor to Nadesdha Guevara, who spoke to denounce this situation in the framework of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of Bolivia within the Human Rights Council held in March 2020 in Geneva. Her intervention thus enabled the various participants and actors in the United Nations to hear a direct testimony of the situation that the Andean country is currently facing. CETIM, lawyer Guevara and other partner organisations will continue to follow closely the evolution of the situation on the ground, in particular in the context of the elections of May 2020, and will not fail to refer the matter to the UN mechanisms again.
To read CETIM’s oral statement (in Spanish)
Listen to the speech of Nadia Cruz, representative of the “Defensoría del Pueblo del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia”
