On April 20, Afro-Colombian activist Francia Márquez sent a letter to the United Nations Security Council about the humanitarian crises endangering Colombia’s opportunity for stable and lasting peace. In her statement, Márquez requests processes of observation, international accompaniment, urgent support, and meaningful alternatives that go beyond the traditional expressions and reports that end up forgotten and ignored by the Colombian government.
Márquez underscores the ongoing assassinations of human rights activists, social leaders, and former combatants throughout the country, and highlights the Colombian government’s lack of political will to fully implement the 2016 peace accord. She has “witnessed the present government’s constant assault on the various social and political sectors who are working for real peace, and the way it intentionally creates financial and institutional obstacles that prevent developing timely programs on the scale needed to implement peace in more remote regions of the country.”
She notes how ethnic communities face a dire situation. “Those of us who support peace feel a helplessness, frustrated that historically racialized, impoverished Colombians, most of whom put their hopes in a negotiated solution to the armed conflict, now do not even know from which direction the bullets are being shot,” Márquez states. She also vehemently denounces the imminent return of spraying illicit crops with glyphosate, noting all the consequences this practice has for public health, food sovereignty and the integrity of the territories.
Finally, she also outlines the lack of transparency in the management of resources, the economic dependence of the National Peace Council, the weight of the bureaucratic responsibilities for the execution of actions, the weak guarantees for the sustainability of the Technical Secretary of the Council, and the unsuccessful attempts at articulation and communication with the national government.
The full, English version of the statement is here.
April 22, 2021