On May 3, the Cooperation Space for Peace (Espacio de Cooperación para la Paz, ECP)—a coalition of civil society organizations of which WOLA forms part of—published a statement about the deepening humanitarian crisis in Chocó department. The organizations who form part of the ECP expressed great dismay to the deteriorating security situation in the department and the lack of institutional state presence in the region.
The ECP expressed solidarity with the ethnic-territorial organizations, churches, and humanitarian agents who, on the ground, have directly verified what is happening in the territories. They call for the use of dialogue to identify and overcome the causes of the situation.
The statement urged the state to implement effective measures to protect the lives of human rights defenders, social leaders, their communities and organizations, and the signatories of the 2016 peace accord, with comprehensive actions that go beyond the militarization of the territories.
Read the original Spanish statement here. Read the unofficial English translation here.
Between February 2021 and May 2021, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) worked with Colombia-based consultants and partners to gather the perspectives of people at the community level about their experiences with the implementation of Colombia’s historic 2016 peace accord.
While there are good academic, statistical, and investigative reports on different aspects of Colombia’s peace, WOLA gathered perspectives on how various civil society actors were viewing the implementation of the 2016 peace on the ground. For peace to be properly consolidated on the ground, understanding how those most affected by the conflict is key and their viewpoints are vital to guaranteeing that peace is successful. Colombia’s regions are each unique with their own historical, cultural, geographic and ethnic differences and the conflict has played itself out differently throughout the country, which has resulted in distinct dynamics on the ground.
Our research covered four different regions of Colombia—Arauca and Catatumbo in the northeast, Chocó in the northwest, and northern Cauca in the southwest. For people to speak candidly without fear of reprisals, there is no direct attribution of the sources of the information in this report.
The report, “Advance the Promises of the 2016 Peace Accord: Civil Society Perspectives on Peace in the Chocó,” summarizes the findings of WOLA’s work with partners in Chocó and includes recommended actions voiced by the communities themselves. This collaboration also sought to identify recommendations for the United States’ and international community’s support for the peace accord and its implementation.
When persons interviewed were asked what can the U.S. government and civil society organizations do to support peace efforts in the region, the following proposals were made:
Recommendations
1)Support the creation of a Commission that can dialogue directly with U.S. policymakers
The U.S. government and civil society organizations should support the creation of a binational commission that serves as an interlocutor with U.S. policymakers to advance peace accord implementation in the Chocó. The Commission would include the U.S. government, Chocoan civil society, U.S. civil society and experts chosen due to their expertise). By helping create this commission, the international community can ensure the 2016 peace accord’s Ethnic Chapter is prioritized, and that peace is implemented in Chocó with a differentiated ethnic, gender, and disability approach. This commission should also incorporate the peace-related demands from various social movements that have formed in the department to petition the government. These include civic strikes (paro civicos) and Indigenous collective peaceful protest actions known as Mingas, all of which urge for the Ethnic Chapter’s comprehensive implementation.
2)Closely monitor the implementation of the Territorially Focused Development Plans (PDETs)
The full and comprehensive implementation of the PDETs, a central commitment of the peace accord’s first chapter, can help transform the structural obstacles to consolidating peace in Colombia. For these plans to function as envisioned by the peace accord, international actors need to closely monitor and advocate for their implementation to help guarantee their advancement and to address complications that may arise. All proposals and projects related to the PDET Chocó must fully integrate an ethnic and gender approach and include the full participation of beneficiary communities. An ethnic approach does not mean superficially placing Afro-Colombian and Indigenous individuals in key positions; rather, only by integrating ethnic communities into all levels of participation and governance at the national level can the PDET truly address on-the-ground realities. As for implementing a gender approach, women and LGBT+ individuals from the territories must be included in the PDET as designers, implementers, and beneficiaries. Finally, the PDET must seek to activate local economies by supporting economic projects proposed by the community councils and the cabildos. Supporting the projects designed by the communities themselves will transform the rural countryside and foment peacebuilding among receptor communities.
3)Send resources directly to civil society organizations
At the moment, resource allocation is at the whim of who holds political office, which often results in alleged embezzlement practices. Civil society organizations have noted suspicious instances where funds are channeled to individuals who actively supported the political campaigns that elected those who hold political office. Therefore, to ensure resources and funds truly meet the needs of implementing the peace accord, international resources to support Colombia’s peace should be administered directly by communities in the Chocó who uphold the well-being of the community. This means empowering civil society organizations to administer resources. These organizations, made up of and elected by the communities themselves, have a wide breadth of experience working to solve the department’s challenges. As such, they hold a deep understanding of the needs of the communities and are beholden to them. Directly allocating much-needed resources to these civil society organizations provides stronger guarantees of transparency and accountability, increasing the likelihood that the resources will be used as intended and preventing their diversion when changes, inevitable in a politicized local context, occur in municipal and departmental governments.
4)Help develop an alliance among victims, ex-combatants, and civil society to demand and monitor the peace accord’s implementation
To advance peace accord implementation at the departmental level, a transformative pedagogy of peacebuilding is required. This strategy must move beyond its current emphasis on university professors and students. It should prioritize the participation of victims of the internal armed conflict, former combatants who are signatories of the peace accord, and diverse sectors of civil society like territorial leaders, social leaders, women, LGBT+ leaders, and youth representatives.
These different sectors already exist in some form. However, they must unify their efforts by forming an alliance that advocates for the peace accord’s full implementation. For such an alliance to form, and for it to be effective, these sectors should join together in solidarity and ensure their communities understand what the peace accord stipulates and how they can demand the implementation of what the state is obligated to fulfill. This alliance should carry out broad-based education campaigns about the stipulations of the peace accord and how state institutions, including the National Police and the judicial and legislative branches, can be used as tools to guarantee short- and long-term compliance to what was agreed to in the 2016 peace accord.
5) Advocate for the Humanitarian Accord Now Chocó!
To sustain the 2016 peace accord and for it to be fully implemented, the other illegal groups operating in the region need to be addressed. The optimal solution would be for them to be addressed via a politically negotiated solution and/or disarmament. Since such solutions have not advanced in the past decade, Chocoan civil society is proposing that all armed groups support the humanitarian minimums found in the Humanitarian Accord Now Chocó!. This Accord seeks to place limits on the internal armed conflict and violence linked to illegal armed groups. It guarantees better protection for civilians stuck in the middle of all these groups and respect for international humanitarian law. It is an effort by coalitions of local civil society organizations and religious entities to step in where the government has failed to ensure guarantees for the lives and physical integrity of civilians living in the area. Its intent is to minimize the impact of the conflict on civilians and to help pave the way for future and continuing dialogues. However, for such an accord to be realized it requires support from the international community, in particular the United States.
Four years after the signing of the peace accord between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a new era of conflict plagues the Pacific department of Chocó. Illegal armed groups continue to viciously contest territorial control, inflicting violence and forcibly displacing Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities. The groups are interested in controlling this biodiverse area rich in minerals including gold. Artisanal mining by Afro-Colombians is a practice started since the time enslaved Africans were exploited and forced to work the mines. This practice takes into account Afro-descendants’ cosmology of environmental preservation and sustainable practices.
In their new book The Price of Gold, Steve Cagan and Mary Kelsey describe how these practices were changed once mechanized mining was introduced to Chocó. While traditional panning for gold minimally affects rivers and forests, mechanized machines and the use of toxic chemicals are creating grave environmental, health, and social damage. In their book, Cagan and Kelsey present an in-depth view of Afro-Colombians’ ancestral mining process and how this cultural practice was integrated into their daily lives. They discuss the impact that widespread mechanized mining is having in these communities and offer testimonials of persons who are fighting for the rights of these communities and the environment.
On Monday, August 3 please join us for a presentation by Steve Cagan and Mary Kelsey about their book The Price of Gold: The Cost of Mechanized Mining in Chocó, Colombia. The event will be moderated by WOLA Director for the Andes Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli.
Steve Cagan has been working closely with the Catholic Diocese of Quibdó, federations of Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities, and Colombian and international NGOs in Chocó, Colombia since 2003. His photographs and writing on issues facing the communities there have been exhibited and widely used in publications on social and environmental consequences of gold mining on four continents. Since the mid-1970s, he has been practicing what he prefers to call activist photography. He’s most concerned with exploring strength and dignity in everyday struggles of grassroots people resisting pressures and problems.
Mary Kelsey has exhibited paintings in New York and other cities, and published drawings and paintings with academic, environmental and other organizations in the United States, Honduras, Guatemala, and Colombia. Her art addresses the interface of cultural and natural systems. She was awarded a Fulbright research grant in Costa Rica for her project, “Drawings and photographs: communities, rain forest conservation and sustainable development,” and subsequently returned as a USIA cultural advisor to Honduras, where she worked with teachers and local artists to create the first illustrated school primer in the Miskito language.
Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli is the Director for the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), where she advocates for the human and territorial rights of Colombia’s Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, among others. She fell in love with Colombia due to the abundant natural beauty of the Pacific region in 1999. Since then, she’s worked in partnership with ethnic activists to advance peace, protect their rights and preserve their biodiverse areas.
The event will be conducted in English, with Spanish translation available.
An interview with social leader Luis Ernesto Olave from Chocó department’s Bajo Baudó region, which is suffering intense combat between the ELN and the Gulf Clan.
Assassins kill indigenous leader Luz Miriam Vargas Castaño at the Avirama reserve in Paez, Cauca. She is the third social leader killed in a 48-hour period in Colombia. Gunmen kidnapped and killed the indigenous governor of Agua Clara, Bajo Baudó, Chocó, and kill social leader Yoanny Yeffer Vanegas Cardona in San José del Guaviare, Guaviare.
Drawing from a June 2020 Comisión Colombiana de Juristas report on judicial bottlenecks faced by efforts to hold accountable the killers of social leaders, this discussion focuses on Chocó.
Caption: “@ArmadaColombia en #Chocó ubicó y destruyó tres áreas campamentarias donde el #ELN procesaba sustancias ilícitas. Los hechos tuvieron lugar en los sectores de Puerto Bolívar, Cabré y Guapagra en el Bajo Baudó.”
Combat between the ELN and the Gulf Clan in rural Bojayá, Chocó, which began on March 28, forces the displacement of 193 indigenous people. 393 more people displace less than two weeks later.
In the Papayo indigenous reserve in the Bajo San Juan River region of southern Chocó, the community is showing severe signs of poisoning. This is due to pollutants dumped in the water by illegal precious-metals mining tied to armed groups.
An in-depth look at the security and human rights situation in Chocó, where Afro-descendant and indigenous communities are caught amid fighting between the ELN and the Gulf Clan.
This video is part of a multimedia presentation that the Colombian newsmagazine produced about the dire humanitarian situation in the northwestern department of Chocó, the country’s poorest.
Visiting Bojayá, Chocó, President Duque promises to increase military presence and social investment in the battered municipality.
That day, Bojayá social leader Leyner Palacios, who had met with President Duque three days before, receives a truculent letter from the commander of the Titan Joint Task Force, a Chocó-based military unit. Palacios had denounced episodes of collusion between members of the security forces and Gulf Clan paramilitaries. In what he calls a “freedom of information request,” Commander Darío Fernando Cardona Castrillón asks Palacios to provide “names or surnames of the security-force members, and the place and date during which such illegal acts were committed, so that respective investigations may be initiated.”
“Boys, girls, and adolescents in indigenous reserves and Afro-Colombian community councils are those most pursued” by the ELN and the Gulf Clan paramilitaries in Chocó.
