The Luis Carlos Perez Lawyer’s Collective (CALCP) is an organisation of women human rights lawyers based in the Magdalenia Medio and Catatumbo regions in northeastern Colombia. These areas are rich in biodiversity and indigenous cultural heritage, and home to vast untapped reserves of coal and oil.

CALCP supports grassroots organisations, displaced communities and victims of paramilitary violence with legal advice and training, and advocates on a national and international level to raise awareness about the impact of armed violence and large scale extractive projects on indigenous and campesino (small-scale farming) communities. 

As a result of their work, CALCP’s lawyers have been threatened, spied on, falsely accused of criminal activities and linked with illicit armed groups. Such stigmatisation can have dangerous consequences in the context of an ongoing, armed conflict, where association with one faction may bring violent reprisals from another.

“We seek to bring the rule of law to the communities… so that it can be a tool for the defence, protection and promotion of human rights, and for the transformation of their communal, social, political and cultural realities.”  Judith Maldonado, director of CALCP.

PBI has accompanied CACLP since 2006.