On September 30, hundreds of Colombian civil society organizations and individuals lauded the U.S. House of Representatives’ decision to pass a Colombia-related amendment in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, which prohibits U.S. defense-budget funding to aerial fumigation of illicit crops in Colombia. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the amendment alongside two other Colombia-related amendments. These amendments, approved through a larger bloc of amendments, will still need to survive approval by the U.S. Senate then the Conference Committee.
The September 30 statement called on the U.S. Senate to maintain the anti-aerial fumigation amendment in the final bill and urged the U.S. Congress to also ensure funds are not allocated to finance the practice during collaborative efforts between the State Department and Colombia. The organizations and individuals underscored the detrimental social, health, and environmental effects of using aerial fumigation with glyphosate and also outlined how the Colombian government has failed to maintain its 2016 peace accord commitments to advance voluntary crop substitution programs. They noted how these failures helped spur the wave of protests that occurred in Colombia in May 2021.
An unofficial translation of the letter is available here.
The original Spanish version is here.
October 1, 2021
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