The lawyers belong to The Columbian Caravana, an international group of 70 lawyers and judges which visited Colombia in the summer to investigate violence against lawyers. Over 400 lawyers, including a disproportionately high number of human rights specialists, have been killed since 1991. Dundalk lawyer Sean T O’Reilly, head of the seven-person Irish delegation, said: ‘We don’t say that lawyers have a better right to protection than anyone else in Colombia. What we say is that if lawyers are targeted and not protected you get a disproportionate effect on the community because the poor can’t go to anyone else.’ Source: Irish Times