Photo: Yuli Andrea Velásquez receives award.
El Espectador reports that Yuli Andrea Velásquez and the Corporation for Judicial Freedom (La Corporación Jurídica Libertad) were among the winners today of the 2026 National Human Rights Award at a ceremony at the Teatro Colón in Bogotá.
The article highlights:
“Yuli Andrea Velásquez, Human Rights Defender of the Year. She is an environmental engineer and president of the Federation of Environmental and Tourism Artisanal Fishermen of the Department of Santander (FEDEPESAN). She has transformed the region’s canoes into mobile community monitoring laboratories. From there, she documents illegal dumping, fish kills, and oil spills that threaten the food sovereignty of more than 500 families, combining the ancestral knowledge of riverside communities with technical rigor to demand environmental justice and defend water as a common good.”
Peace Brigades International has accompanied the Regional Corporation for the Defence of Human Rights (Credhos) since 1994. In turn, Credhos accompanies Yuli Velasquez and Fedepesan. PBI-Canada coordinator Brent Patterson first met Credhos in November 2019 (in Toronto when Ivan Madero Vergel came to Canada for an advocacy tour) and Yuli and Fedepesan in June 2022 (in Barrancabermeja).
“For over thirty years, the Corporation for Judicial Freedom (CJL) has established itself as a fundamental pillar in the comprehensive defense of human rights, environmental justice, and peacebuilding with social justice in the territories most affected by the conflict in Antioquia and Chocó. With a multidimensional approach that intertwines strategic litigation, community training, psychosocial support, and grassroots communication, its work encompasses the representation of 380 individual and collective cases that bring to light the suffering of approximately 900 victims of extrajudicial killings, the fight against impunity in emblematic sites of forced disappearance such as La Escombrera and La Esperanza, and the ongoing support of environmental leaders who protect their territories from the pressure of megaprojects.”
Peace Brigades International has accompanied the Corporation for Judicial Freedom since 2000.
Image by the Corporation for Judicial Freedom.
Father Javier Giraldo passed away on August 25 of this year.
It was Father Giraldo who invited Peace Brigades International to Colombia that led to a first exploratory mission in 1993. Father Giraldo also participated in the creation of the Inter-Church Commission for Justice and Peace in 1988.
Peace Brigades International has accompanied the Inter-Church Commission for Justice and Peace since 1994.
Video still of Father Javier Giraldo.
And the Association for Research and Social Action (Nomadesc) posted on Instagram:
“WE WILL NOT NORMALISE GENOCIDE; WE WILL CONTINUE TO STRIVE FOR DIGNITY
María and James taught us not to give up, to continue thinking differently from those who bring about death, dispossession and destruction. We will continue to defend life, the land and the rights of the peoples. We join hands and hearts with our comrades, children, young men and young women of the social movement in south-western Colombia. Here we are; here we remain today, and more than ever we will turn solidarity into a song of hope.”
Peace Brigades International has accompanied Nomadesc since 2011 and its president Berenice Celeita since 1999. PBI-Canada coordinator Brent Patterson first met with Berenice and Nomadesc in July 2022.
Yanakuna Indigenous leader María Ovidia Palechor and peasant leader James Flor were killed in their home on September 1 in the district of La Pedregosa, municipality of Cajibío, Cauca. Infobae reports: “With the violent deaths of Palechor and Flor, Indepaz registered a total of 103 community and indigenous leaders murdered in the national territory so far this year, representing an average of one case every 2.3 days in the country.”
