June 2012 NOREF Report Stopping irreparable harm: acting on Colombia’s Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities protection crisis Gimena Sanchez-Garzoli Executive summary Despite security gains on the part of the armed challenges facing ethnic minorities and to provide forces and the demobilisation of the United Self- recommendations for how the international Defence Forces of Colombia paramilitaries, community can act to guarantee Afro-Colombian Colombia’s protracted internal armed conflict and indigenous communities’ protection. The persists. Civilians continue to be hard hit by main thrust of the recommendations is that the violence, displacement and human rights abuses international community should put pressure on perpetrated by armed groups. Afro-Colombian and the Colombian authorities to apply in practice indigenous communities are disproportionately the model theoretical protection of communities’ affected by this violence and displacement, rights that exists in the Colombian Constitution. potentially leading to their cultural and physical The U.S. and Colombian authorities should be extinction. Protection mechanisms for ethnic pressured to reconsider their indiscriminate crop- minorities and their collective lands rights remain spraying programme that supposedly targets ineffective in spite of the Colombian Constitutional only coca crops, while countries who have Court’s efforts. State-led security strategies, the concluded free-trade agreements with Colombia mining boom, land restitution efforts and free-trade should be pressured to ensure that these do not agreements bring with them additional security further threaten the rights of indigenous and Afro- challenges for Afro-Colombian and indigenous Colombian communities. groups. This report seeks to describe the protection Gimena Sanchez-Garzoli is an expert on Colombia and international humanitarian law. She has worked as a senior associate at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a U.S. NGO dedicated to changing U.S. foreign policy towards Latin America so that it respects human rights and supports democracy and socioeconomic justice. She leads WOLA's Human Rights in the Andes Programme, which focuses on human rights, internal displacement, the dismantling of armed groups, ethnic minorities' rights and labour rights since 2006. WOLA's work involves influencing U.S. policymakers and bringing Colombian independent and civil society voices to these policymakers. This report was prepared while she was a guest researcher at NOREF in early 2012. Stopping irreparable harm: acting on Colombia’s Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities protection crisis Background international humanitarian law and, as such, have harmed many civilians, as is evidenced by the Bojayá massacre of over 80 Afro-Colombians, Colombia’s multifaceted internal armed conflict including women and children, who sought refuge dates back to the mid-1960s. It followed the period from combat in a church in May 2002. of partisan violence known as La Violencia, when liberals and conservatives fought each other and In 2003 the Colombian government initiated a left-wing guerilla insurgencies developed. The two peace process with the AUC paramilitaries that guerilla groups that remain active today are the led to the official demobilisation of some 30,000 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) people. While this controversial process led to a and the smaller Popular Liberation Army (ELN). decrease in paramilitary abuses, it did not lead Guerilla groups claim that they took up arms to to the full dismantling of their military, social and fight the state in order to combat inequality, and economic structures. Paramilitaries who did not the political and social exclusion of the rural demobilise maintained much of the AUC’s modus classes. operandi and regrouped with new recruits. These splintered factions of the AUC continue to operate Political and economic elites protected themselves in collusion with narcotics traffickers, elites, parts from attacks, kidnappings and extortion by of the military and even guerilla groups. guerillas with private militias licensed by the government. These right-wing militias, known Today,1 new paramilitary groups are present as CONVIVIR, operated legally until Colombia’s in 209 Colombian municipalities, where they Constitutional Court outlawed them in 1997. engage in human rights abuses, violence and Fueled by financing from the cocaine trade and illegal activities. Armed combat threatens civilians’ extortion, the militias continue to operate illegally. security and generates new displacements. In In the mid-1990s the militias united and formed 2011, in Cordoba Department alone, homicides the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia numbered 500. The Colombian government (AUC). refers to the new paramilitary groups as Bacrim, or emerging criminal bands, and estimates their To control territories and root out the guerillas, number to be 5,000. Analysts find it may in reality the AUC brutally targeted civilians by engaging be closer to over 10,000. in war crimes, including massacres and mass displacements. In some cases, the AUC acted FARC guerillas have increased their armed in collusion or with the complicity of members activities since 2004, with 2,000 attacks taking of the armed forces. These paramilitaries allied place in 2011 alone.2 The ELN engaged in 217 themselves with many landowners, the political armed actions in 2011 and continues the practice elites, and powerful economic sectors to control of kidnapping. All illegal armed groups finance territories and implement large-scale development their operations via the cocaine trade, extortion projects. These groups were financed by the drug rackets and the control of other illicit economies. trade, extortion rackets, and the political and Colombia’s conflict should not be viewed solely as economic elites. The large-scale displacement of one between the state and multiple illegal armed rural farmers from their lands that resulted from groups; it is far more complex than this. One paramilitary violence was a deliberate strategy facet that enabled the level of violent paramilitary to depopulate areas in order to facilitate the control of most areas of the country under the AUC implementation of both legal and illegal, mainly was the links that existed among members of the drug, economies. Land grabs took place utilising military, political elites and business interests. many tactics: violence, threats, coercion, forced sales and falsified land transactions. Guerillas also Colombia's Supreme Court has in recent years committed human rights abuses and atrocities, made considerable progress in investigating and displaced civilians. As the AUC increased its dirty tactics and crimes against humanity, 1 Observatorio de Conflicto Armado Arco Iris, Informe anual de la Corporación Nueva Arco Iris, Política y violencia en 2011: “Las the guerillas increased their violations. FARC cuentas no son tan alegres”, Bogotá, Observatorio de Conflicto guerillas have also notoriously not respected Armado Arco Iris, 2012. 2 Ibid. - 2 - Stopping irreparable harm: acting on Colombia’s Afro-Colombian Stopping irreparable harm: acting on Colombia’s Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities protection crisis and indigenous communities protection crisis - 3 - Stopping irreparable harm: acting on Colombia’s Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities protection crisis Colombian Congress members accused of which is an official grouping of indigenous collaborating with paramilitaries. In the "para- organisations, states that the total number of politics" scandal, more than 120 former indigenous groups is 102. The government’s 2005 Congress members have been investigated and census only recognises 87 different ethnicities, approximately 40 convicted. In February 2011 thus omitting 15. The census also found that former Senator Mario Uribe – former president indigenous peoples make up 3.4% of Colombia’s of the Colombian Congress and second cousin population. These indigenous peoples speak an of former President Uribe – was convicted of estimated 64 different languages and exhibit a having ties with paramilitaries. While demobilised tremendously rich diversity in terms of cultures, paramilitaries have also made statements about social organisation, governance, cosmology and extensive collaboration with local politicians, way of life. senior military officers and businesspeople, the Attorney-General's Office’s investigations of such Most indigenous peoples still live in rural areas. people have advanced slowly. Colombia recognises 710 reserves located throughout the country, totalling an estimated 34 While many of these links were exposed through million hectares. However, several communities the “para-politics” scandal and a long list of have not obtained such recognition. Indigenous officials are either in jail or under investigation, a populations are more concentrated in the areas complete clean-up of paramilitarism’s infiltration of Guainía, Vaupés, La Guajira, Vichada and of regional economies has yet to take place. There Amazonas. The lack of effective state protection are concerns of ongoing infiltration of the political for indigenous civilians and their collective system by paramilitaries and their successor land rights in the context of armed conflict has groups. As of September 2011 the Supreme Court generated the internal displacement of a rising has opened investigations against ten current number of indigenous people to urban areas.