Jineth Bedoya Lima
The successive governments’ decision to expand monoculture for the production of biofuels is one of the drivers behind the development...
Emblematic Cases
ABColombia Emblematic Cases: Overview
Buenaventura
Buenaventura is Colombia’s most important port city. Despite its significance for international trade and tax revenue, Buenaventura is one of Colombia’s least developed cities and communities are affected by the lack of basic services and the presence of illegal armed groups.
COCOMOPOCA
COCOMOPOCA (Consejo Comunitario Mayor de Alto Atrato) is made up of 43 Afro-Colombian communities who under Law 70 (1993) made an application for collective ownership of their land title. They struggled for 12 years to have their land-rights recognised. A struggle that saw them forcibly displaced from their territory and their leaders threatened and killed.
The Wounaan Indigenous People
The Wounaan People are one of the Indigenous peoples in Colombia that are at risk of extinction due to displacement and violence. They live on the River San Juan near a dense rainforest in a particularly bio-diverse region in the South of Chocó. The Wounaan have been forcibly displaced on several occasions.
Jineth Bedoya Lima
Jineth Bedoya Lima is a Colombian journalist and Human Rights Defender. The violent sexual attack against her is one example of the way in which sexual violence is employed as a means to intimidate and punish women defenders for their work.
The Zenú Indigenous Peoples
The Zenú Indigenous Peoples from the Alto San Jorge Resguardo in Cordorba belong to the Indigenous Groups at risk of physical or cultural extinction. They have been raising the issue of the alleged impacts of the nearby BHP Billiton Cerro Matoso Ferro Nickel mine and processing plant on the health of the Zenú People and the contamination of the environment.
The Linea Negra, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
The Linea Negra for Indigenous Peoples is the “Heart of the Earth.” It is a ring of 54 sacred sites around the base of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta that form the boundary of the ancestral territory of the region’s four Indigenous Peoples: Kogui, Arhuaco, Wiwa, and Kankumano. They are direct descendants of the Tayrona culture who built the pre-Columbian cities.
News on Emblematic Cases
Cocomopoca: Their Right to Land in Colombia
In June 2011: Leaders from communities torn apart by Colombia’s internal armed conflict brought their stories to the UK...