PBI-Colombia accompanies Credhos at meeting with human rights committee in San Pablo, South Bolivar

On May 23, PBI-Colombia tweeted:

“We accompanied @Credhos_Paz in San Pablo, South Bolívar in a meeting activity with the Human Rights Committee of Credhos in the area. For more on the Magdalena Medio, see our last article on the protection of the swamps here.”

That article notes:

“The marshes are bodies of water that are essential to the ecosystem, bodies of water which give life to extraordinary flora and fauna.

These natural phenomena also attract economic interests that threaten to damage them, even to make them disappear, as is the case with the rivers and marshes of Magdalena Medio.

In this region, full of water and environmental defenders, extractive activities, agribusiness and extensive cattle ranching are advancing, devastating in their path territories inhabited by ancestral communities, in the case of Sur de Bolívar especially Afro-Colombian peoples, peasants and artisanal fishermen.

The Pajaral swamp, located in the municipality of Cantagallo, in the department of Sur de Bolívar, is a paradigmatic example of the environmental damage being suffered by the water basins of Magdalena Medio.

This marsh, whose water body has decreased drastically since 2017, is not only fundamental for the ecological balance but also for the more than 300 families who live there and subsist thanks to it.

Since 2018, the Regional Corporation for the Defence of Human Rights (Credhos), an organisation accompanied by PBI since 1995, together with the grassroots organisation Afro-Colombian Federation of Artisanal Fishermen of the Municipality of Cantagallo (Fapamucan), began to fight for the defence, protection and recovery of this marsh.”

For the full article/interview with CREDHOS environmental engineer Juan Camilo Delgado Gaona and CREDHOS lawyer Manuel Camilo Ayala Sandoval, click here.

Photo: Juan Camilo Delgado Gaona and Manuel Camilo Ayala Sandoval on a Zoom call with Global Affairs Canada, May 2021.