According to our information, the number of trade unions in Colombia has increased over the past years. I don't have the yearly percentages, but the information for 2007 tells me that there are one million unionized workers in Colombia and 7,650 trade unions. The administrative measures taken by government have reduced the registration process from fifteen days to five days. The government has also adopted measures whereby after those days have elapsed, and if no answer has been given to the applicant in favour or against, it will be deemed approved and therefore the trade union can be established.
In relation to the number of cases, the number of violent incidents against trade unionists is quite high. This has concerned the ILO for the past 20 years. We have 1,262 cases that have been presented to the ILO and that are also being heard by the Colombian courts.
There is another measure I wanted to explain to Mr. Cardin. The government established a prosecutor's office with the financial resources and investigative capacity to address 187 of the cases within that package. Those were selected as priority cases by a tripartite group that included government, workers, and employers. The results so far indicate that of those 187 cases, a sub-unit of the prosecutor's office has been able to conclude only 38, with judgments and sentences issued. This contrasts greatly with the situation up until 2005, when only 47 cases had been concluded and sentences handed down. What encourages us is that we have gone from 47 judgments in four or five years to 38 in just one year. And with speedier legal processes, the figures will be reduced substantially.