PBI-Colombia accompanies CAHUCOPANA at meeting with Canadian Embassy on self-protection mechanisms in Antioquia
On February 24, the Humanitarian Action Corporation for Coexistence and Peace in Northeast Antioquia (CAHUCOPANA) posted:
“Today in the city of #Bogota, in the premises of the Canadian Embassy Cahucopana Nordeste socialized the results of the project Segovia resists, Segovia for Peace! Funded by the Canadian Fund for Local Initiatives (FCIL), in which we presented the updating of self-protection mechanisms and consolidation of a specific mechanism for the protection of women, youth and girls in rural areas of our region.”
CAHUCOPANA further posted about this: “For the permanence of the Peasant Communities of the territory Yes to peace, no to war!!!!”
On September 17, 2024, the Embassy announced that it had granted CAHUCOPANA funds to “strengthen community protection and self-protection mechanisms in rural areas of the municipality of Segovia, through the strengthening of knowledge in human rights, international humanitarian law, women’s rights and gender equality, and the consolidation of capacities for participation, leadership and enforceability.”
On October 15, 2024, PBI-Colombia accompanied CAHUCOPANA at a community meeting, as CAHUCOPANA explained in a social media post, to “analyze and evaluate our community self-protection mechanisms for the defence and permanence of mining, peasant and ethnic communities in the territories.”
In this social media post, CAHUCOPANA gives “thanks to the international cooperation of the Embassy of Canadá in Colombia.”
Mining in Antioquia
PBI-Colombia has previously explained: “The abundance of natural resources in these lands [of northeast Antioquia] and the arrival of multinational companies, such as the Canadian Gran Colombia Gold, has provided the illegal armed groups who are present in the region with an extremely lucrative funding source in mining.”
In December 2024, Lital Khaikin reported in the independent media outlet The Breach: “Gran Colombia Gold merged into Vancouver-based Aris Mining in 2022, and continues to operate the Segovia mine in Antioquia, an underground mine currently being expanded to produce over 300,000 ounces of gold per year.”
She adds: “Canadian multinationals like Aris Mining and Quimbaya Gold have entangled themselves in a community already deeply marked by human right abuses, cartel networks, and sustained armed conflict.”
She also notes: “As The Breach previously reported, Gran Colombia has worked with sub-contractors that are implicated in laundering illegal gold into legal markets and have ties to right-wing paramilitaries.”
Khaikin concludes: “Canadian companies are relying on contract mining amid poor regulation, expanding without community consent into unprotected areas, and continuing to source gold in a murky territory run by Colombia’s most powerful cartel—all amid what the UN Refugee Agency has described as a deteriorating humanitarian situation.”
We continue to follow this.
PBI-Colombia has accompanied CAHUCOPANA since 2013.
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