Colombia is in the throes of its worst social crisis in decades as citizens have maintained a national general strike for over six weeks now, despite attacks from Canadian and US-armed security forces that have killed dozens and wounded hundreds. CoDev partners NOMADESC, SINTRACUAVALLE and FECODE are either participating in the strike or are in the streets as human rights observers.
This new video provides a useful update in English on the situation.
Labour and Human Rights Program director with NOMADESC staff
By Filiberto Celada (Human and Labour Rights Program Director, CoDevelopment Canada)
During CoDev’s Schools Territories of Peace Canadian teacher delegation to Colombia, I took some members of the delegation to observe a pedagogical encounter in Monteria, Cordoba province in Colombia’s Caribbean Region. Together with teacher delegates Anjum Khan and Susan Trabant, we travelled to the conference with John Avila, former director of the Colombian Teachers Federation’s (FECODE) Centre for Education Research and Development (CEID) and Jose Luis Ortega, executive secretary of the Córdoba Teachers’ Association’s (ADEMACOR) CEID.FECODE and ADEMACOR organized the conference entitled: Pedagogical Movement, School Territories of Peace and III Pedagogical National Congress and 2nd Provincial Encounter of Secretariats of Pedagogical Affairs – ADEMACOR 2019. Between 15-20 teachers attended this provincial encounter at ADEMACOR facilities where members of CEID and FECODE presented an analysis of the Schools as Territories of Peace program and the education policies and agreements with the Colombian Government. The last day of the encounter, 10 teachers presented and shared their alternative pedagogical experiences within 10 different schools.
It is important to highlight the fact that some teachers were presenting their alternative pedagogical experiences as part of their Master’s thesis in education. It was very motivating to witness that even that it was their own thesis, the teachers were open to share their methodology and results and welcomed their colleagues to use what they had developed in other schools without caring about copyrights.
After the Schools Territories of Peace Delegation was over, I traveled to the city of Cali in southwestern Valle del Cauca province to meet with CoDev partner NOMADESC (Association for Research and Social Action). While visiting Cali I was able to:
1) Introduce myself and meet with NOMADESC’s staff, explain CoDev’s model of partnership and international solidarity;
2) Meet with NOMADESC’s beneficiary population: members of the community of el Jarrillon and of Buenaventura;
3) Meet with NOMADESC’s Director Berenice Celeita to evaluate the project Comprehensive Defense of Life, Territory and Culture in Colombia.
4) Participate as International Observer in the National Congress of the Republic of Colombia’s session in the City of Santander de Quilichao in the department of El Cauca, organized by Senator Alexander Lopez due to the acts of genocide against the indigenous guard in Colombia’s Pacific coast.
by Education Program Director, Wendy Santizo
CoDev accompanied a Canadian teacher delegation to visit Colombia and learn from the “Schools as Territories of Peace” project FECODE is implementing across the country. Our visit coincided with the celebration of provincial pedagogical circles encounters, where teachers shared their experiences in bringing peace education to the classroom. Pedagogical circles are made up of teachers, school principals, parents and students to discuss and create alternative pedagogies that will result in promoting peace, dialogue, conflict resolution, historical memory and democratic participation in their communities.
The delegation split up and visited three provincial encounters in Montería, Córdoba; Cúcuta, Norte de Santander and Fusagasugá in Cundinamarca.
Three of the experiences presented that most caught my attention were the “7 Hats”, “The Memory of the River” and “My History”.
The first provides students with a tool they can use to analyze any conflict situation and decide how to react in a constructive way. There are seven different coloured hats, each representing a question or perspective of looking at the conflict. Once the student answers these questions, they are in a better position to talk about it and solve it in a peaceful way.
The second is a long-term school project, it was created to recover the historical memory of the local river. It begins with students researching the history of the river, its names, where it originates, what stories are linked to the river, fiction or real, when did the contamination of the river begin and why. Today the school has created a project to protect the river and plant hundreds of trees.
The third consists of students interviewing their grandparents or elders in the family and neighbourhoods and asking: What was school like before? What was the neighbourhood like? What is the story of their town? These stories and anecdotes are shared in the classroom and collective memories begin to be recovered, as well as stronger ties across generations.
The delegation also had the opportunity to visit several museums and galleries including the photographic exhibition “The Witness” by Jesus Abad Colorado in the National University of Colombia. The exhibition demonstrates how communities and schools have experienced the armed conflict and were affected by multiple armed actors.
Meetings were held with FECODE’s Executive Committee and representatives of the CUT (Colombian labour central) Executive to speak about working conditions in Colombia, the impact on workers of the entry of Colombia into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, as well as analysis around the national strike that was being prepared for November 21st.Among the demands of the strike are: No more tax, wage and labour reforms without consultations; An end to the killings of social and environmental leaders; the right to healthcare for teachers and their families; Strengthening of the national teachers’ social security fund, and; Implementation of agreements previously signed with the national government, that include the implementation of a diploma program for teachers in peace education and declaring schools as Territories of Peace.
The teachers’ unions seek peace with social justice, reconciliation and truth. FECODE prepared a report with detailed cases of teachers, social leaders and unionists who were victims of systematic accusations, persecution, threats, forced disappearances and assassinations to be presented to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) as part of their commitment to the clarification of truth in Colombia.
FECODE’s “Schools as Territories of Peace” project is facilitated by CoDevelopment Canada with support from the BC Teachers’ Federation, the Ontario Secondary Teachers’ Federation, the Centrale des Syndicats du Quebec and the Surrey Teachers’ Association.
In Colombia almost 700 rights defenders and over 135 former FARC members have been assassinated since January 2016. Those killed include community leaders, teachers, trade unionists, representatives of victims and survivors groups, and water and forest defenders.On July 26, 2019 CoDev and our Canadian partners joined thousands around the world to draw attention to the wave of violence against Colombian social leaders, and to call for an end to it.CoDev shares this video of some of the actions that took place across Canada to honour the invaluable work that social leaders and human rights defenders do for life and peace in Colombia.
Last December, CoDev Executive Director Steve Stewart, in his capacity of Co-Chair of the Americas Policy Group (a national coalition of organizations working for human rights and development in the Americas) testified to the Canadian Parliament's immigration committee on the causes of forced migration from Central America. We recently discovered an online transcript of his presentation and, since the conditions leading to forced migration from the region have only worsened since last December, we share it here.
Mr. Steve Stewart (Co-Chair, Americas Policy Group, Canadian Council for International Co-operation) at the Citizenship and Immigration Committee
December 4th, 2018 / 3:45 p.m.
Thank you. I'll first tell you very briefly about our organization. I'm here as the co-chair of the Americas policy group. It's a national coalition of 32 Canadian organizations that work on human rights and development in the Americas.
While some of our member organizations, such as Amnesty International, work directly on migration, most of our work is done directly in the countries of Latin America. The majority of our members focus on three regions: Mexico, Central America and Colombia.
Given that we have a fairly limited time for the presentation, I'm only going to touch very briefly on Colombia and Mexico and focus primarily on the Central American countries, particularly Guatemala and Honduras, because I believe that's the area where Canadian policy can play a role.
The focus in this presentation is primarily on the conditions that lead to migration. I think the speaker who preceded me did an excellent job of covering that, so I may jump over some of my points.
Colombia has the highest number of internally displaced people in the world after Syria, with 6.5 million people who are displaced. Despite the demobilization of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia last year and an end to that part of the war, violence and displacement continue. In 2017, violence in the country generated another 139,000 displacements, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. Although sometimes we have the impression that there is peace in Colombia, violence is still generating large numbers of internally displaced people.
There are a number of factors behind these displacements. They're common through all of the countries I'm referring to here. They are the impacts of free trade, extractivism, the drug trade, corruption and organized crime. It's exacerbated, as the previous speaker mentioned, by climate change. In Mexico—and I think you've probably heard these statistics before—large numbers of displacement and violence coincided with the launching of the drug war in 2006, with a total of some 250,000 people believed to have been killed between the launching of the war and last year, while another 37,000 people have been forcibly disappeared.
In Colombia and Mexico, it's not uncommon for local government and security forces to act in collusion with organized crime, but it's in the Central American countries, in particular Guatemala and Honduras, where these networks have also deeply penetrated the national state. Organized crime operates on a number of levels in Honduras and Guatemala, ranging up from the street gangs that you've heard about in earlier testimonies, such as the Mara 18 and the Salvatruchas, who control both urban neighbourhoods and also a number of rural areas in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, often serving as the foot soldiers for more sophisticated criminal networks involved with drug trafficking, but also involved with graft in a large scale at the state level, and sometimes providing security to transnational corporations operating in these countries.
I'm not going to go in depth on statistics, but some rather stark examples have come up recently with the arrest last week of the brother of the Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández on cocaine smuggling charges, and then just last year Fabio Lobo, the son of the former president, Porfirio Lobo, was sentenced to 24 years after being convicted in U.S. courts on similar charges. In both of these cases, testimony indicates that the Honduran presidents were aware of these activities and, at the very least, did nothing.
However, the Honduran government's involvement in organized crime goes beyond links to drug smuggling. De facto President Juan Orlando Hernández, in his previous term, was forced to admit that his party looted the national public health and social security system to fund his 2013 electoral campaign.
We find similar cases in neighbouring Guatemala. In 2015, the president, vice-president and most of his cabinet were forced to resign and were indicted on corruption charges after investigations by the United Nations' international commission against impunity, CICIG, revealed a vast organized crime network within the Guatemalan state.
The president that succeeded him, current president Jimmy Morales, is now also under investigation. In recent times, though, his administration has taken steps to block the effective work of the UN body by preventing its director from entering the country.
The penetration of organized crime into government and state institutions takes place in the context of economic and ecological shifts in the region that are generating significant internal displacement. There are many different factors linked to that, which I mentioned previously.
In the Colombian case, the influx of low-priced basic grains that followed the signing of free trade agreements with North America and Europe in the past 25 years has reduced local food production and made it much more difficult for rural families to earn a living growing basic foods. This is combined with new unpredictability related to climate change, and pressure on farming communities from the expanding agro-industrial frontier—primarily sugar cane and African palm, which is, ironically, often used for the creation of biofuels.
These serve to drive the farmers from the land, either to marginalized communities in surrounding urban areas, or to take the long and dangerous migrant trek.
I know I'm running out of time already—Click here for the full transcript and questions.
Vancouver, Canada, July 26, 2019.
CoDevelopment Canada (CoDev) stands in solidarity with our Colombian partners and the many human rights and social organizations mobilizing today to demand an end to the systematic killing of social leaders and human right defenders and the undermining of the 2016 peace accords.
The number of social leaders assassinated has increased every year since the Peace Accords between the Colombian government and the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC). Between January 2016 and May 2019, 681 community leaders and human rights defenders have been assassinated , as well as 135 former guerrillas. Hundreds more are under threat or are politically persecuted.
The majority of these crimes take place in territories where indigenous and afro-Colombian communities resist state-supported displacement for mining and oil projects and the expansion of agro-industries, as well as the illegal drug trade. Those killed played important roles defending their communities’ territorial rights, denouncing government corruption, or opposing illegal armed groups and illegal economies. They include community leaders involved in land restitution processes, teachers, trade unionists, representatives of victims and survivors’ groups, and water and forest defenders.
The Final Peace Accords were signed in November 2016, but President Ivan Duque’s administration has resisted their full implementation, attempting to dismantle the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, a transitional system to guarantee justice for the victims of mass atrocities and other human rights violations. Under Duque, Colombia has become even more militarized, with the increased use of soldiers to surveil social leaders and communities, and a suspension of the peace process between the government and the National Liberation Army (ELN, Colombia’s other guerrilla movement).
CoDev, joins human rights and social movements in Colombia and around the world to call on Colombian authorities to:
Protect the life and integrity of social leaders and human rights defenders, and investigate and bring to justice those responsible for their killings.
Respect and fully implement the 2016 Peace Accords, including the Special Jurisdiction for Peace to guarantee the right to Truth, Justice, Reparation, and Non-repetition.
From Canada, we send our support and our commitment to continue to accompany our Colombian partners in their struggle to defend the human, social and environmental rights of their communities, and to call our own government to denounce the human rights violations in Colombia and support the full implementation of the 2016 Peace Accords.
In 2017, social organizations launched a remarkable three-week civic strike that forced the Colombian government to negotiate solutions to the city’s pressing social and human rights crisis. Residents literally shut down Colombia’s most important trade route. Many, many activists were called upon to organize and participate in this momentous event with remarkable success.
The strike won important concessions from the 3 levels government to improve community infrastructure and the collective rights and safety of the inhabitants. Yet threats against the community leaders continue to grow exponentially as plans to expand and modernize the port continue. While the Colombian government signed peace agreements in the autumn of 2017, violence connected to large landowners and corporate economic interests remain active throughout the country.
CoDev was pleased (along with other organizations listed below), to host a high level delegation of three of those Colombian social leaders as they toured Canada from October 25 to November 9, 2018. These leaders represent the Buenaventura Civic Strike Committee in Colombia’s principal Pacific port city. Members of the delegation included:
As part of the tour, CoDev sponsored an International Solidarity Committee Conference. This conference brought together many of our union partner IS Committee representatives for a memorable day of sharing and learning about not just the historic civic strike in Colombia, but how activists in Canada can learn from our brothers and sisters in Latin America and from each other. Workshops included such topics as: Creative Ways to Engage Members (union) in International Solidarity, Dealing with Divisive Issues in International Solidarity and Community/Labour Alliances to Protect Public Services.Andrea Duncan, a member of the BC GEU International Solidarity Committee put it best when she said, “Labour’s battles and human rights have absolutely no borders.” This was a sentiment echoed widely throughout the day.For more information about International Solidarity and how CoDev can provide you and/or your organization with learning opportunities, please contact CoDevelopment Canada at: codev@codev,org or call 604.708.1495.To read more about the Buenaventura Strike Committee and its historic work, read: https://bit.ly/2J9SvTw. You can also listen to a radio interview with Maria Miyela Riascos on Radio Canada Internationale here: https://bit.ly/2PobU9w(NOTE: The delegation was organized by Co-Development Canada and the Colombia Frontlines Initiative (includes: Public Service Alliance of Canada, Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the Canadian Union of Public Employees)
CoDevelopment’s partner NOMADESC (Association for Research and Social Action), together with other human rights organizations of southwestern Colombia, are requesting support in urging the new government of President Ivan Duque Marquez to take immediate action to prevent the systematic killing of social leaders and human rights defenders in the country.According to Colombian human rights organizations, 123 social leaders were killed and 600 others received death threats between January and July 2018. One such threat was circulated August 9 in the city of Cali by the narco-paramilitary group Aguilas Negras (Black-Eagles). The leaflets declared 10 social organizations and 21 rights defenders military targets, stating: “The Aguilas Negras reiterate our position to counteract at the national level the urban structures of the insurgency, camouflaged as supposed social leaders, and direct our units to stop the advance of the so-called “Colombia Humana,” which promotes progressive “sellout” governments inclined to strengthen leftist organizations, contrary to the political project proposed by Doctor IVAN DUQUE.”Among the organizations targeted are the Valle del Cauca Teachers’ Union (SUTEV, a member of our partner, the Colombian Teachers’ Federation), and Margarita López, president of Valle del Cauca water worker’s union SINTRACUAVALLE, another CoDev partner.Please send our urgent action to Colombian President Ivan Duque:
[formidable id="73" title="1"]Please also send messages and photos of solidarity with Colombian social leaders and human rights defenders through social media:Facebook:Nomadesc: @AsociacionNomadescFecode: @fecodeSintracuavalle: @sintracuavalle.presenteTwitter, using the hashtags #SerLiderNoEsDelito #NoHayPazSinDefensoresNomdesc: @NomadescFecode: @fecodeSintracuavalle: @SINTRACUAVALLE
CoDev partner NOMADESC (works to train members of community organizations in southwestern Colombia as human rights promotors able to document and process rights violations. In a sweep of mass arrests April 20-22, Colombian authorities arbitrarily detained dozens of elected community leaders and rights defenders in the communities where NOMADESC works. Among the charges levelled against those arrested is membership in, or association with, the National Liberation Army (ELN), an armed rebel movement currently in peace talks with the Colombian state. The accusations are reminiscent of the “false positives” human rights crimes of the past decade, where the Colombian military abducted and murdered marginalized youth and community activists in order to dress them in military fatigues and claim them as guerrilla “kills.”Please send our urgent action to Colombian President Manuel Santos, urging him to release the detainees and guarantee their safety and rights to a fair and open trial.Follow NOMADESC to learn more about their incredible work: Twitter; Facebook; Instagram; YouTube[formidable id="72" title="1"]
Teachers were joined by students and parents in organized peaceful actions across the country, in some cases there were serious confrontations between peaceful protesters and police officers, and furthermore in the context of the national strike three teachers were killed and one disappeared.Some of the hard fought agreements are:
On Tuesday June 6, Colombian authorities and community leaders in the Pacific port of Buenaventura reached a deal to lift the 21 day civil strike that emphatically demanded the national government and President Juan Manual Santos, to fulfill their commitments with the peoples of Buenaventura signed in 2014.Peoples in Buenaventura were tired of seeing the economic interests of transnationals always placed first, while their basic public needs were shoved aside and communities forgotten and submerged in extreme poverty and violence.
Under the deal, President Juan Manual Santos’s government promised to present a bill to Congress to create a 10-year special development plan for Buenaventura, and has pledged to invest US$500 million in Colombia’s most important port city. The government would be investing in the areas of running water 24 hours a day, basic sanitation services, housing and infrastructure, education, employment, the environment, healthcare provision, and access to justice.This hard-won deal comes after three weeks of civil striking that brought violent repression by ESMAD (Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadrons) against communities in Buenaventura. At least two people have died and countless others have been injured.We greatly value and commend the peoples of Buenaventura, for their organization and perseverance in defending their human rights, territories, and life of communities in Buenaventura.We thank all of our supporters who responded to our urgent call to action and wrote letters calling on President Santos to halt the repression faced by citizens of Buenaventura. Our friends at NOMADESC (Association for Research and Social Action) appreciate your solidarity!
I sometimes wonder when I sign urgent actions and petitions what impact they have. Do leaders listen? Are our concerns heard? One thing is certain – our partners on whose behalf we write these urgent actions most certainly do hear and appreciate our solidarity.CoDev’s partner NOMADESC recently asked us to share this letter of appreciationwith all those who have raised their voices in defense of their work for social justice in Colombia. CoDev also thanks all of you who have taken the time to write letters and send messages of support – your solidarity is clearly appreciated by those on the frontlines of the struggle for a better world.Here is the original letter in Spanish, with the English translation below.NOMADESC
Santiago de CalíOctober 1st, 2015Dear friends of CoDevelopment Canada and unions in solidarity with ColombiaOn behalf of the team at NOMADESC and the organizations with which we carry out our work of prevention, attention and defense of human rights in the southeast of Colombia, we wish to extend our warmest greetings of friendship and brother- and sisterhood.With this letter, we want to express our profound thanks for all your work on urgent actions regarding cases of threats and persecution against members of NOMADESC and the arbitrary arrest of ACIN’s indigenous leader Feliciano Valencia. Thank you for taking the time to carry out actions of prevention and defense of the rights of those of us who continue dreaming of justice and social transformation in Colombia.The work that you do is an important demonstration of solidarity, struggle and resistance in the midst of a world where social humanism has lost its value thanks to the imposition of the economic interests of a few, who wish to eliminate the possibility of thinking differently, and who persecute those of us who work to defend the rights of everyone.Thank you for accompanying us in this difficult work of defending the right to life, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights, and bringing these issues to the attention of world leaders – in this case, Colombian leaders, who favour international economic interests over the rights of the poorest and most vulnerable communities in our country.Thanks to your solidarity, those who violate human rights in Colombia know that we are not alone, and that important sectors of workers, human rights defenders, labour activists and humanists in Canada are aware of these injustices and demand respect for human rights defenders’ safety and freedom.Talking about peace cannot continue to be simply a discourse of Government of Colombia; to talk about peace is to talk about respect for the rights of human rights defenders, social movement leaders, and union leaders. To talk about peace is to talk about social justice, respect for difference, social transformations, truth, the inclusion of marginalized sectors, and above all, guaranteeing that the barbarity and extreme violations of human rights historically committed against the leaders of Colombia’s organized movements never be repeated.Thank you for defending the right to solidarity of the peoples of the world.A fraternal hug,Berenice Celeita A.Director of NOMADESC
