By John Gibler
In September, 2024, the UK-based advocacy organization Global Witness released its annual report on violence against environmental and territorial defenders across the world. In 2023, the report claims, at least 196 people were murdered for defending their land, ancestral territory, or the environment. As in previous years, the largest number of documented cases of murdered defenders (166) were in Latin America. And of those, 79 took place in one country: Colombia.
In November 2016, the Colombian government signed a revised peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest guerrilla force in the country. The agreement ostensibly ended a more than 50-year-long internal conflict. The fact that other major armed groups such as the guerrilla National Liberation Army (ELN) or the paramilitary Gulf Clan did not partake led many to worry that the accord would not create a lasting peace. Others were hopeful that the FARC’s demobilization and the end to Colombian military campaigns in broad swaths of the country would put an end to at least some of the violence. In 2017 and 2018, there seemed to be a brief pause of sorts. And then the killing began again.
"In recent years, since the signing of the peace accords with the FARC, and the FARC’s withdrawal from many territories, there has been a fragmentation of the armed groups and their dynamics of violence,” said Carlos Beristain, a Spanish physician, writer and doctor of psychology who has served on numerous truth commissions including, most recently, in Colombia. Where once the FARC controlled territory, local populations at least knew whom they had to negotiate with. With the dissolution of the FARC, many former fighters kept their weapons and put their training and skills to use in administering coca production, cocaine trafficking and, increasingly, illegal mining. They began to fight among themselves. The paramilitary enemies of the FARC also saw opportunities to move into their former territories to regain control. Many activists and social movement leaders, Indigenous and campesino communities, as well as entire towns and cities, found themselves in the middle of a splintered, shifting, unpredictable war for territory, drug routes and natural resources.
“In Colombia there is a lot of illegal mining,” said Javier Garate, Global Witness’ policy adviser for the environmental defenders’ campaign, “and these illegal mines are controlled by illegal armed groups, especially paramilitary groups. And there’s a direct link there: they want access to those lands to inflict violence on the communities.”
Latin America has among the highest homicide rates in the world, with 8% of the global population and 29% of all homicides. In recent years, 40 of the 50 most homicidal cities in the world are in Latin America. A high percentage of these killings are related to organized crime. The perilous situation facing territorial and environmental defenders occurs in this broader context.
I recently reached out to Lina María Espinosa, a Colombian lawyer and defender of Indigenous autonomy and the rights of nature based in Ecuador, to ask her about the risks facing defenders in Colombia. Espinosa, in her work with Amazon Frontlines and the Ceibo Alliance, has won major cases against the Ecuadorian government including the Waorani people’s defeat of oil drilling in their territory in 2019 and the A’i Cofan people’s victory against mining in 2018. Espinosa has represented the Siona people on the border between Colombia and Ecuador in their struggles to stop oil exploration and protect their territories. As a result, she has had to navigate harassment and death threats for many years. The Interamerican Commission on Human Rights recently issued precautionary measures to her. What follows is a translated excerpt of our interview.
Why do you think Colombia became the country where the highest number of environmental and territorial defenders were murdered last year?
Undoubtedly, murder is one of the “most effective” mechanisms to silence defenders and it is undoubtedly the most brutal, but that does not mean that there are not also other forms of threat, persecution, discrimination, and criminalization as well. It is important to point out that in Colombia there has been a substantial increase in the murder of defenders related or linked to issues of territorial and environmental defense and that most of them are from Indigenous or Afro-descendant populations or otherwise work in the territories of indigenous or Afro-descendant communities. This also reveals a pattern because in those same territories where defenders are being murdered, we are seeing implementation or imposition of oil or mining projects, legal or illegal. There is also the imposition of the dynamics of war, the control of irregular or regular armed actors who intend to reimpose, retake or maintain control of those territories for different purposes and this also reveals how these groups have been reorganizing and re-articulating themselves. Before they were groups that had a very direct relationship with the entire drug trafficking economy. Today they also have a direct relationship with illegal mining, they have a direct relationship with agribusiness and that means that this diversification of their interests also broadens the interest they have in the territories. So, we defenders become more bothersome for these actors and therefore we end up being more recurrent victims of serious violations of rights, including the right to life.
In addition, although Colombia has policies for the protection of defenders and mechanisms such as the National Protection Unit, those mechanisms are not proving to be efficient and, fundamentally, are not working, not proving to be suitable. It’s important to point out that measures such as bulletproof vests or cell phones in areas where there is not even coverage obviously do not become a protection mechanism. In addition, there are many defenders who do not even have access to these measures, which means that a clear review must be made of what the risk situation really is and what individual and collective measures can be effective in protecting the life that needs to be safeguarded. Furthermore, these defenders should not have to leave their territories because when attacks are made against their lives, when the work of those of us who defend human rights is attacked, democracy itself is attacked, collective processes are attacked, and the possibility of building truth and justice is attacked.
What are the main struggles of territorial and environmental defenders in Colombia now?
It is important to point out on the one hand those struggles that seek to stop the extractive frontiers of oil, mining, and everything that has to do with energy policy. Then there are the struggles for the restitution of legalized territories of a collective nature on behalf of Indigenous, Afro-descendant, or peasant communities that have been displaced or dispossessed. In these territories, communities carry out and control clear processes and procedures for conservation, but above all, they design and realize autonomous governance of their territories. Hence, their struggles are linked to the demand for the existence of public policies and regulatory frameworks that guarantee the protection of the territories, the protection of everything within them, some people call that environmental protection, but for the Indigenous and Afro-descendent communities this is the defense of life worlds.
There is an important struggle to place nature and the territories in the center as full subjects of rights. There is also an urgency on the part of the defenders who claim that sometimes the human victims of war, the human victims of extractivism cannot speak of what is happening because of fear or because they have been silenced. Nature and the territories have voices and can give an account of the war, they can also give an account of the mechanisms of resistance. And that is another one of the struggles to protect nature and vindicate nature as a subject of rights that can also give an account of everything that has happened against it and against those who inhabit it.
Which actors or institutions are the main sources of the risks that defenders face?
I think that talking about sources of risk also implies an analysis of the different territorial conditions, but first there are the armed groups of narcos, paramilitaries, guerrilla dissidents, etc. that have a specific interest in controlling certain areas and, as I mentioned before, also have links or connections with mining, palm plantations, the control of large tracts of land for livestock, and so on. Second, obviously, there is the army, particularly in that zone where the army continues to be one of the protectors of the whole mining and energy system and of the associated activities. And then, third, there are the groups that are arriving to new territories and that are brought by the actors themselves with the intention of getting into mining.
And, of course, the State is largely complicit by not being there. For example, consider the border areas where the State is structurally absent and the communities do not have an ally with respect to the protection and guarantee of their rights. And the State is also absent in matters of, for example, investigation or sanction. The prosecutors' offices do not have specialized personnel for environmental crimes and for the protection of defenders or, even when they do have them, they have limited resources. And then the people in the communities, the defenders do not understand the State representatives. We do not see them as allies in this search for protection and justice.
How has this situation changed--the struggles and the risks--after the signing of the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)?
The arrival of peace, the signing of the Accords, was undoubtedly a relief in many sectors of Colombian society. Unfortunately, this was not the case along the shores of the Arauca River or on the border between Colombia and Ecuador. Since 2017, Amazon Frontlines and several of the local communities have denounced that the Peace Accords led to a reconfiguration of the war. Unfortunately, the Colombian State still does not want to recognize that in effect the conflict persists and that these are not isolated acts of violence. Instead, going back to 2017, there has been a restructuring of the armed actors and territorial control between dissidents from the FARC commanders, non-signatories, and narco-paramilitary organizations. Initially, between 2017 and 2018, actors vying for territorial control disputed the activities linked to the coca economy and the illegal mining economy. Today, the various groups are locked in disputes to maintain the controls they attained and generated since 2017. And we have been denouncing how issues like forced recruitment, constraints on Indigenous organizational activities, the imposition of control and regulations in the territories have been reinstated and, in fact, escalating.
In 2018, we successfully petitioned the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to grant precautionary measures to the trans-border community of the Siona people of Buenavista and Piñuña. These precautionary measures have been extended in my favor, as a human rights defender and member of Amazon Frontlines. What this shows is that in effect these armed actors, specifically Comandos de Frontera and the Carolina Ramírez Front, (an outgrowth of right-wing paramilitaries and FARC dissidents who refused demobilization, respectively) continue to be actors who impose fear, who impose violence, who impose war on the territories and that the work that we human rights defenders do makes them uncomfortable. Therefore, we become their military objective. Let's say that they feel that we dispute their power, the fear and the control that they want to impose on the territories.
It's difficult because there is no longer even a specific group with whom one can sit down to have certain discussions or to ask for clarifications. There is a major increase in threats against leaders, against defenders. And then, either one often has to submit to their demands, as has already happened for the Siona people and for me in particular. We had to move away from the territories and were prevented from doing our work of close and permanent accompaniment, which is our methodology and the commitment we have with the communities. And this forces the defenders into a situation of lack of protection, because in the end the State does not have effective protection and care mechanisms. We have to stop our work or do it in a context of greater risk, where what always ends up at stake is our life.
The war is still on-going in the territories and people are still living in terror. And the rights and territorial defenders keep fighting because what we won’t allow is for the killers to enjoy the comfort of our silence.
