Colombia is the deadliest country in America for human rights defenders.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has been warning this for years, and a new report published this Tuesday reveals that this fact did not change in 2023. The IACHR verified 126 murders of human rights defenders throughout Latin America in 2023, 70 of them occurred in Colombia;
more than 55% of cases.
Brazil came in second place with 21 homicides.
Behind the data, there is a clear reason why the Andean country is so lethal for defenders: coca.
The four most violent departments for human rights defenders (El Cauca, Putumayo, Nariño and Valle del Cauca) are located in the southwest, where the coexistence between coca cultivation, drug trafficking and armed groups has resulted in years of bloody conflicts that control the lives of the civilian population.
The other department that appears in the top five, Arauca, is located on the border with Venezuela, and has been known for years as a land port for the export of tons of cocaine to the neighboring country.
These are the three most lethal departments for human rights defenders:
Cauca
Cauca suffered the highest number of murders of human rights defenders in 2023: 16. One of the departments where the most coca and marijuana is grown, its population suffers almost daily from clashes between the two main armed groups in the country, the ELN and the EMC, more specifically the dissident columns Jaime Martínez and Dagoberto Ramos.
The report highlights that in 2023 in Latin America, “as in previous years, this violence was particularly directed at those who defend the environment and the territory and people with indigenous and Afro-descendant leadership.”
The indigenous communities of Cauca and Putumayo are particularly affected.
People gather to protest the murders of social leaders, activists and peace signatories, on February 20 in Bogotá.Sebastian Barros (Getty Images)
Researcher Juan Manuel Torres, coordinator of the Pacific office of the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation (Pares), explained to this newspaper in December that the dynamics of violence in Cauca responds to years of disputes between illegal groups and that has involved the indigenous population.
“The majority of the members of the Dagoberto Ramos column of the EMC are made up of Nasa indigenous people, who have distanced themselves from the indigenous movement.
There are areas that have bred children for war for a long time.
It is difficult to determine the reasons for this cruelty other than the fight for territorial control.
Others seek to recruit, ignoring the indigenous authorities, while organizing the marijuana business in the area,” he explained.
In December alone, five human rights defenders were murdered in Cauca, according to the IACHR.
Among them were the indigenous leader Eliécer Puyo Chocué, murdered in Caldono;
the social leader John Freiman Ramos Ocaña, in Santander;
the peasant leader Carlos Arturo Quijano Velasco, in Silvia;
the indigenous leader Marino Paví Julicue, in Toribío;
and the peasant leader Robert Fernández, in Cajibío.
Putumayo
Just south of Cauca, close to the border with Ecuador and the vast Amazon, is the second most violent department for human rights defenders: Putumayo.
There, despite a bilateral ceasefire signed between EMC and the Government in December 2022, the Carolina Ramírez Front began 2023 continuing with forced recruitments, the “social cleansing” of criminals and the confrontations for which it has become known. ―and feared― in the area.
One of the most impoverished regions and abandoned by the State, nine defenders were murdered in Putumayo last year.
Representative Andrés Cancimance, of the government's Historical Pact, explained to this newspaper in May that the clashes between the Carolina Ramírez Front and the Border Commandos, another group of dissidents from the former FARC, have confined the communities - many of them indigenous - to them. that operates in the border area between Colombia and Ecuador.
Violence is so deep-rooted in Putumayo that these armed groups seek to recruit even 10-year-old children.
Of the nine human rights defenders who were murdered in Putumayo in 2023, five had their lives taken in Puerto Asís, the largest and most commercial city in the department, with a population of about 64,000 inhabitants.
Workers in a coca laboratory in Putumayo, in November 2022. Esteban Vanegas (Bloomberg)
Nariño
Nariño is the third deadliest department for human rights defenders.
In 2023, there were 8 murders of members of that community.
Trapped between the Pacific Ocean to the west, Ecuador to the south, Putumayo to the east and Cauca to the north, Nariño is the department with the most coca crops: 59,746 hectares, according to the 2022 report of the United Nations Integrated Illicit Crop Monitoring System United (Simci).
Behind those 60,000 hectares of crops, numerous armed groups have arrived in the area and, as usual, fight for territorial control.
Among them are several fronts of the EMC, the Second Marquetalia and the ELN itself.
And they have shown no mercy to the civilian population.
According to data from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in the first half of 2023 individual displacements in Nariño increased by 33%, with 4,788 victims, and mass displacements by 17%, reaching 16,137 affected.
In addition, cases of impact from explosive devices such as antipersonnel mines claimed the lives of 55 victims in those six months.
The ICRC also documented 44 cases of disappearances between January and September.
The violence escalated so much that in August the then governor, Jhon Rojas, issued a statement about the crisis in the department.
“We consider that the humanitarian crisis and the escalation of the conflict in Nariño is very serious,” the document reads.
Colombia has been a dangerous country for human rights defenders for decades.
Since the peace agreement with the former FARC was signed in 2016, that has not changed.
According to Indepaz, between November 24, 2016 and November 23, 2023, 1,270 human rights defenders were murdered in Colombia, including social leaders, such as representatives of peasant and indigenous groups.
In 2022, the IACHR published a figure of 126. Last year, it dropped to 70. However, it is still by far the country in the region with the most murders of members of that community.
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