Photo: Diario La Voz.

Today, the Council of State, the supreme tribunal with jurisdiction over administrative issues, will consider the issue of fracking in Colombia.

The Alliance for a Colombia Free of Fracking says: “[The court’s decision will send a] message about the need to protect the right of future generations to enjoy a healthy environment in the context of the climate crisis, the greatest challenge we have faced as humanity.”

The Alliance adds: “The coastal communities of the Middle Magdalena, young people, fishermen, those, and those who have suffered for more than a century oil exploitation in their region, set all their hopes in the Council of State.”

“Fracking must be censored as soon as it contradicts our 1991 Ecological Constitution, the Paris Agreement, the Rio de Janeiro Convention, the Ramsar Convention, among other instruments of international human rights law.”

The Alliance also cautions: “However, nullity itself is not enough. The National Government has been advancing since last year in a new strategy for the implementation of fracking known as Integral Research Pilot Projects.”

Last month, Valora Analitik reported: “[Ecopetrol president Felipe] Bayón explained that on March 11, the State Council of Colombia will begin the discussion on the regulation of fracking ‘which will take several months.’ But, he said, the regulation of the [fracking pilot projects] is in force and they will continue.”

That article adds: “Bayón confirmed what was said yesterday in that for that pilot he hopes to have the licence by the end of 2021 and to be able to start with the activity in the area as soon as that happens.”

The first licence for a fracking pilot project in Colombia was awarded by the National Hydrocarbons Agency (ANH) to Ecopetrol on November 25, 2020 for its Kalé project near the community of Puerto Wilches, Santander.

A second round of contracts for fracking pilot projects is expected to be awarded on April 8. Among the transnationals that have reportedly pre-qualified for one of those contracts is Toronto-based Sintana Energy/Patriot Energy which holds a 30 per cent stake in the VMM37 block near Puerto Wilches along with ExxonMobil.

UN Special Rapporteur David R. Boyd recently told the Colombian Congress: “In light of its obligations under constitutional, international, human rights and environmental law, fossil fuels must be replaced by renewable energies. I respectfully maintain that the government of Colombia must pass a law to prohibit fracking.”

In November 2019, PBI coordinated an advocacy tour in Canada with representatives from the Regional Corporation for the Defence of Human Rights (CREDHOS) and the Luis Carlos Pérez Collective Lawyers Corporation (CCALCP) who highlighted their concerns about fracking at numerous meetings across the country.

In this feature article in El Espectador, Gwen Burnyeat talks about her experiences with Peace Brigades International in Colombia:

“Peace Brigades International is dedicated to providing international accompaniment and observation to the dynamics that conflict generates and provides protective accompaniment to human rights defenders who are threatened by their peaceful and legal human rights work. This NGO has had a project in Colombia since 1994.

I applied to be part of a team that is rotating because it changes every two years. I was accepted and sent to the Urabá. I lived for two years in Apartadó, where I provided accompaniment to community organizations and human rights defenders in San José de Apartadó, Cacarica, Curvaradó, Jiguamiandó at Bajo Atrato.

It was a fascinating experience, very hard. I knew firsthand the difficulties of living the armed conflict, I witnessed very strong situations, structural violence, exclusion, poverty. But I was also able to enjoy incredible scenery, witness the courage, creativity and love of communities that build peace amid violence and make in-depth analyses of their situation, while formulating alternative life proposals that are inspiration to many people in the world.

That experience changed me, it affected me deeply. I fell in love with this region and even today I continue in my purpose of researching the cultural, historical, political, social, economic dynamics of armed conflict.”

In the full article, Burnyeat also discuss the death of Manuel Ruiz (a member of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó who was disappeared, tortured and found dead in Mach 2012); the experience of an eight-hour trek through the mountains to commemorate the killing of eight people by paramilitaries and the army in 2005; the cocoa exported from the Peace Community to Lush Cosmetics; making the documentary Chocolate of Peace with Pablo Mejía Trujillo; and much more about her life, activism and academic work.

The full article can be read (in Spanish) here.

We also found this reflection by Gwen on the PBI-United Kingdom website written after her first year in Colombia.

Gwen noted: “I generally went on three or four field trips per month, to each of the three communities that we accompany. Sometimes these trips involved a lot of travel – in jeeps, on motorbike taxis, in boats, walking or on a mule – as the community leaders who risk their lives to claim justice and work for peace often are most exposed when they are travelling. Sometimes it was roads and paths and rivers for days on end.”

She added: “I learned so much during my year as a volunteer in Urabá, about Colombia, its people and myself. That’s why I’m going back for a second year.”

This year, PBI-Canada has prioritized finding individuals who can spend a year or more in Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala or Honduras as a brigadista.

PBI entities in the US, Colombia, Mexico and Canada collaborated in this webinar on February 28 that discussed what it’s like to be a PBI brigadista.

On March 3, the IAPL Monitoring Committee on Attacks on Lawyers posted that CAJAR lawyer Sebastián Escobar Uribe was threatened on February 22.

IAPL explains:

“Sebastián Escobar Uribe is one of the CAJAR lawyers who participated in the documentation of extrajudicial executions known publicly as false positives. Crimes that have been qualified by judicial operators as crimes against humanity committed by members of the security forces.

As a lawyer, in addition to the presentation of reports, he also brought action before the International Criminal Court regarding the preliminary examination of Colombia, which, among others, focuses on this type of crimes.

Sebastián Escobar Uribe received a short call (33 seconds) on his mobile phone, in which a man threatened to kill both him and Juan David Díaz Chamorro. The latter is the son of Edualdo Díaz Salgado, mayor of El Roble (Sucre), who was assassinated on 10 April 2003.

Sebastián Escobar Uribe believes this threat is related to the recent actions he carried out on behalf of the Díaz Chamorro family before the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP).”

The full IAPL post can be read at Colombia: Lawyer Sebastián Escobar threatened again in the course of his work. ProtectLawyers (OIAD) also highlighted Sebastián Escobar Uribe in this article posted in June 2020.

The José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective (CAJAR) has been accompanied by PBI-Colombia since 1995. CAJAR has 15 lawyers and 30 legal assistants working on more than 500 cases of human rights violations and breaches of international humanitarian law.

For more: PBI-Colombia accompanied CCAJAR highlights concerns about Cerrejón mine that exports coal from Colombia to Canada.

The Spanish international news agency EFE reports: “Ten UN special rapporteurs sent a letter to the President of Colombia, Iván Duque, asking the Government not to resume the aerial spraying of illicit crops with the herbicide glyphosate, a plan that the Ministry of Defense wants to undertake in the coming months.”

The NGO Dejusticia released the letter on March 7.

The letter says: “[The resumption of spraying] would violate the peace agreement and against the provisions of the Constitutional Court regarding the hierarchy between the strategies for the eradication of illicit crops.”

The letter also says that spraying would be carried out in “a context of systematic violence against indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoples and human rights defenders who work to protect the right to health and the environment in the country.”

And it adds that spraying poses “enormous risks for human rights and the environment, at the same time that it would not comply with the conditions established in the ruling T-236 of the Constitutional Court, nor with international obligations. in the matter.”

Among the signatories to the letter are Mary Lawlor and José Francisco Cali Tzay, respectively the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders and the Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples.

The EFE article further reports: “The current Minister of Defense, Diego Molano, has repeated on several occasions that the Executive’s plans are to start spraying in April and that the Air Force is getting ready to do so.”

When Julia Figueroa and Andrea Nocove from the Luis Carlos Perez Lawyers’ Collective (CCALCP) took part in a PBI advocacy tour in Canada in November 2019 they highlighted concerns about the forced eradication of coca crops.