Activist killings in Colombia, critical context for the COP-16

Members of the Indigenous guard from Cauca participate in the inauguration of President Gustavo Petro in Bogotá, Colombia on August 8, 2022. Photo © Daniela Díaz.

Reportage • Daniela Díaz Rangel • October 18, 2024 • Leer en castellano

Colombia's biodiversity is as varied and enormous as the panorama of violence facing those fighting to conserve it. But the Colombian state appears to have forgotten the plight of land defenders, who are facing unprecedented attacks against their organizing.

This was evidenced in the latest report published by Global Witness, which relies on the work of the Colombian organization Somos Defensores. The report casts a shadow on Colombia, which is the most dangerous country in the world to be an environmental leader. Last year 79 environmental activists were killed, 40 percent of the worldwide total.

Since Somos Defensores began to keep a registry in 2012, the number of killings of defenders adds up to over 400. But this is just the tip of the iceberg in regards to structural violence against those who dare to defend the environment and their territory. They not only face threats but also stigmatization and legal persecution.

Repression in Colombia is also related to the high level of social organization, and at least twelve types of organizers can be identified, some more threatened than others. The leadership of Indigenous peoples is the most affected by the killings, followed by community leaders, who tend to be people who represent their municipality, town, neighborhood, or the place where they live. Environmental defenders face the third highest number of aggressions.

The characterization of the Somos Defensores project, which tracks violence against rights defenders in Colombia, also looks at attacks on organizing by victims, human rights activists and defenders of women's rights, Afro-descendants, youth, LGBTQI+ people and union leaders.

Fighting despite the risks

Pedro Abel Castañeda is one among hundreds of local leaders in Colombia. For at least thirty years, he has been dedicated to protecting the Pisba Paramo in the Boyacá department from mining exploitation on the part of large U.S. multinationals. 

"We have constantly organized ourselves to stop the devastating advance of mining that has negatively impacted the water in an entire region,” said Castañeda in an interview with Ojalá. “Our land defense against these large companies has generated a great deal of conflict.”

In 2013, Castañeda, together with other farmers in the area, succeeded in expelling the Hunza Coral mining company, which had opened more than 60 mine shafts in the area in an irregular manner, threatening a water source that supplies two departments. Then came the threats, which dissipated with time, but that reappear periodically.

The most recent intimidation against Castañeda took place last May, when men claiming to be from the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla declared him a “military target” in a telephone call. Although he alerted authorities about the calls, he has no protection other than a bulletproof vest, a cell phone and a panic button. With these bare bones tools, he continues working the fields and fighting for the environment as part of the Association of Community Aqueducts of Tasco.

The story of Pedro Abel Castañeda is repeated over and over again throughout Colombia. According to the Somos Defensores program, there are 170 socio-environmental conflicts in the country. In 2023 alone, the organization recorded reports of 765 aggressions—concentrated primarily in nine departments—against defenders.

Historical violence

To understand the bloody panorama faced by Colombia’s social leaders, it is essential to take a look at the history of violence and how people have organized themselves to protect against it, often in a communitarian manner.

Astrid Torres, the director of Somos Defensores, says social movements in Colombia have been exterminated for at least a century. This has been exacerbated in the context of an armed conflict that has plagued its territory for over 60 years. "For a long time women defenders were considered enemies of democracy, equivalent to guerrillas,” Torres explained in an interview with Ojalá. “This is what we call the doctrine of the internal enemy.”

This permanent tragedy has multiple causes, and although there have been periods of tense calm, it is ongoing through to today. After the signing of a Peace Agreement with the now-extinct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) insurgencies in 2016, many Colombians thought perhaps we were going to be able to move on. The agreements included measures to safeguard the environment and those who protect it. But in the eight years since it was signed, the government failure to implement the accords has triggered a renewed cycle of violence.

Organizers point out that it is not only the lack of implementation of policies and measures, but also that there are key points yet to be resolved, including the very conception of the notions of protection and emergency. Currently, the National Protection Unit (UNP) provides superficial measures to those under threat, and killings have been registered against people who are part of the protection system. It is unclear how many people under protection have been killed.

The highest level protection consists of a security detail with two armored vans, but in most cases those under threat are given only a bulletproof vest, a cell phone and a panic button, as in the case of Castañeda. As of August of last year, 8,067 people were under UNP protection.

In addition these measures take an individual approach, when resistance in Colombia is most often communitarian and collective.

Added to the lacking protection system is the shameful figure of impunity with regards to the perpetrators of crimes against defenders. Somos Defensores told Ojalá that, according to its study, between 2002 and 2022, the Attorney General's Office has issued only 179 convictions for murders of human rights defenders. This despite the fact that at least 1,300 complaints have been filed. That’s an impunity rate of 87 percent.

Petro and the COP-16

With the rise of Gustavo Petro, who is historically close to social movements and whose program pushes Total Peace—a plan that seeks dialogue with all illegal armed groups in Colombia—it was hoped obstacles to justice would be removed.

But this has taken longer than expected. The protection of social leaders has been omitted in negotiations related to ambitious pacification policy, even though many of these illegal structures are the main perpetrators. “It makes no sense to open a dialogue if [the lives of] social leaders are not going to be respected,” said Torres, who adds that it is urgent this issue be given greater importance in thinking about peace.

Both Castañeda and Torres understand the problem as structural, and think the government and private actors in particular must work to stop the killings. Today, the regions with the most threats against land defenders tend to align with those where extractivism and the presence of multinationals threaten the environment.

Colombia’s Truth Commission and the Special Jurisdiction for Peace created in the 2016 Agreement shed light on the criminal alliances between companies and illegal armed groups, which are also called “civilian third parties” in the transitional justice system.

Both entities established that national and international companies had dealings with paramilitary structures like the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), paying for the assassination of social leaders who hindered their interests. The most emblematic case is that of the US company Chiquita Brands, which was recently found guilty of similar alliances and forced to pay reparations to eight victims.

With the United Nations Conference on Biodiversity (COP-16) right around the corner (it will be held from October 21 to November 1, 2024 in the city of Cali) the focus is on the environment and those who fight for its conservation, particularly in the Amazon.

Organizations such as Crisis Group have warned of increasing destruction of the Amazon carried out by the post-agreement armed group Estado Mayor Central. Since October 2023, the national government has been holding talks with a faction of this armed group.

Pedro Castañeda will also travel to be at the COP next week. With just a vest and panic button he says he still feels unsafe, but that his best protection is an organized community.

“I was born here, I grew up here, and I'm going to die here,” he said in a phone interview from Tasco. He hopes that one day—in the not too distant future—working in defense of water will not cost him his peace of mind, or his life.