The Environment and Indigenous People in the Context of the Armed Conflict and Peacebuilding Process in Colombia: Implications for the Special Jurisdiction for Peace and International Criminal Justice
Publisher: Instituto Colombo-Alemán para la Paz (CAPAZ)
Author(s): Ricardo Pereira, Britta Sjöstedt, and Torsten Krause
Date: 2021
Topics: Assessment, Governance, Peace Agreements
Countries: Colombia
Four years have passed since the government of Colombia, under former president Juan Manuel Santos, signed a peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People's Army, also known as FARC-EP (OACP, 2016). For decades, the armed conflict had shaped Colombian society, culture, politics, and the natural environment. The list of committed violations of human rights as well as international humanitarian law (IHL) is long, and includes forced displacement of millions of people, the recruitment of minors to join the ranks of guerrilla groups, planting of landmines, and killing tens of thousands of civilians. In addition to the unspeakable social impact, the armed conflict affected the environment, and inevitably also the people in it, in various negative ways; for example, deforestation caused by illegal mining and coca plantations (Negret et al., 2019; Dávalos et al., 2011), mercury pollution of watersheds from illegal gold mining (Guevara et al., 2016; Wagner, 2016), aerial fumigation of coca crops and accidental fumigation of other crops with glyphosate, and pollution of soils and river from disruption of oil pipelines. This policy brief aims at assessing the impact of the armed conflict in Colombia on the environment and on indigenous peoples, and the application of the rules of IHL and international criminal law to the armed conflict as well as their implications for the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) and for international criminal justice.