She felt discomfort and endured various forms of prejudice including jokes about black men and women and receiving mistreatment at other local businesses. These acts of racial discrimination are long-term effects of the year war between the Colombian government and the FARC, affecting the Afro-Colombian communities, despite the peace agreement granting rural land reform and development as reparations for the victims in Music and dance are therapy for many in Colombia, helping to heal from the scars from the numerous bombings over the last few years and continued violence that emerged after from rebel groups.
Another member found music to combat with growing up without parents and not going down the wrong path. Unfortunately, twenty-five years later, the promises contained in Act 70 remain elusive. Three main drivers of dispossession are: illegal drug cultivation, illegal mining, and mega-projects sited in traditional Afro-Columbian territories without their consent and often without legally-mandated consultation.
The sub-sections that follow will give a brief overview of how these phenomena bring violence and pollution to Afro-Colombian territories and, in the process, institutionalize inequality. They cut the forest for cultivation. Plants and animals are eliminated. And, the chemicals for production of cocaine contaminate.
This is the reason for more armed conflict in the area. It is a by-product of cocaine. Her advocacy for the land rights of her community in the face of illegal coca cultivation put her in jeopardy.
She faced threats, harassment, and intimidation based on her defense of her territory, and her support for voluntary substitution of illicit crops under the Peace Agreement. Following the killing of two community leaders, she was forced to leave her communities. Criminalizing, smearing, and threatening social leaders has long been a response to social protest in Colombia. Drug trafficking not only brings violence to Afro-Colombian territory, it also brings environmental devastation. PCN members emphasized the connection between the violence, the drug trade, and environmental degradation.
Their lived experience puts a human face on similar observations by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime. In the late s, the Colombian government adopted aerial glyphosate spraying as a primary tactic to combat drug trafficking.
Aerial spraying not only destroyed illicit drug crops, but also killed all the legal crops these communities grew, dramatically harming these largely subsistence-based communities. Moreover, exposure to the glyphosate used in the aerial spraying causes dermatological, respiratory and other health problems among those who live in sprayed areas.
For this reason, the Colombian Constitutional Court ordered that fumigation not occur without prior consultation with affected communities. However, under intense pressure from the United States to reduce coca cultivation, Colombia announced that it would resume spraying.
Regardless of the legal wrangling, multiple PCN members report that aerial sprayings continue in their territories without warning. As a result of these sprayings, Afro-Colombian communities suffer serious negative consequences like skin diseases, breathing difficulties, destroyed crops, and contaminated water. Afro-Colombian men and women have practiced artisanal mining in Cauca for generations, digging by hand with pickaxes in small-scale mines and panning for gold.
However, these permits are typically issued without prior informed consent from the relevant Afro-Colombian communities, and often without adequate consultation. As such, this licensed mining should also be flatly illegal under both Colombian and international law.
Both kinds of illegal mining are closely tied to violent displacement of Afro-Colombians from their traditional lands. Following massive Afro-Colombian community displacements in and , for instance, applications for mining permits in Cauca soared.
The connection between illegal mining, violence and human rights violations in Colombia has been well-documented. Similarly, the UN Working Group of Experts of People of African Descent expressed alarm over the violence that Afro-Colombians face in opposing mining in their territory [] , and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination emphasized the need for consultation before allowing mining in Afro-Colombian and indigenous territories.
Aside from the violence it brings, illegal mining also devastates the environment. Among the most significant effects are deforestation and contamination of water sources.
By contrast, traditional Afro-Colombian mining practices are relatively environmentally benign, rely on human effort rather than toxic chemicals, and are small-scale to avoid wide-spread ecological destruction. The gold from these artisanal operations supplemented family income, which is particularly important for subsistence farmers for whom the mined gold might be their only source of currency.
More importantly, artisanal mining is a cultural practice as much as an economic one—it brings Afro-Colombian people together on a regular basis, knitting together the strands of community life. Afro-Colombians are among the most marginalized communities in the country.
Data from the Census suggested that Afro-Colombians living in urban areas are almost three times more likely to be based in slums than their non- Afro-Colombian counterparts. Significant disparities are also evident in their access to essential services compared to the non-Afro-Colombian population, including water 72 per cent compared to 85 per cent , and lower levels of access to other services.
Leading Afro-Colombian activists speak of the existence of a geographical apartheid and a structural and institutionalized racism that continues to permeate Colomb ian society. This is characteriz ed by the absence of the state and the lack of infrastructural or meaningful investment in areas with predominantly black populations. The civil conflict has devastated many Afro-Colombian regions. Violence and trafficking are permeating the Pacific coast and Afro-Colombian communities as far away as the island territories of San Andres and Providencia.
Many young people in these communities have limited options beyond fighting , drug trafficking or being trafficked for prostitution. Some Afro- Colombians with limited opportunities for meaningful employment have reportedly b e en tempted by the guerrilla, paramilitary, drug trade, or accompanying forms of trafficking and prostitution that support the conflict.
The paramilitary and guerrilla are extremely risky options, but in regions with extreme poverty, they may provide the only source of income and survival. Given the extremely low rates of social security benefits obtained by Afro-Colombian workers, a small pension or survivor benefits to family members may serve as an incentive to engage in illicit activities.
Along with the parts of the country with largely indigenous populations , the regions with the highest concentration of Afro-Colombian communities are the areas that have been worst affected by the violence of the conflict and continue to face serious insecurity despite the Peace Agreement.
As a result , Afro-Colombian communities are some of those whose collective and individual human rights are abused and violated on a regular and increasing basis, often driven by the implementation of large-scale economic development and mega-projects without their consent. Activists argue that mega-projects such as those currently being implemented for the mass expansion of palm oil plantations endanger the territorial basis for maintaining the unique Afro-Colombian culture and social structure which has de veloped over the last years.
Many m ega-projects are financed by the Colombian government, international private capital, international financial institutions and Western governments with the aim of supporting the process of paramilitary demobilization through the creation of alternative agricultural projects to re-employ and re-integrate ex-combatants into civilian life.
However, NGOs state that the demobilization process has not brought an end to the violence and the human rights abuses suffered by Afro-Colombian communities. Indeed, m any projects have been responsible for the continued forced displacements of Afro-Colombians, as lands allocated for the implementation of such projects are often found in the collective territories legally granted to them under the L aw 70 of Widespread displacement from communal lands has contributed to the process.
In this context, reinforced by existing discrimination, many urban Afro-Colombians have been exposed to poverty, exclusion and physical insecurity. Violence is a common problem in other urban areas, too, epitomized by Buenaventura, a coastal settlement of , people, of whom an estimated 84 per cent are Afro-Colombians. It was widely reported in the media in that this was the most violent city in the country, with the local population were constantly terrorized by criminal gangs and extortion rings.
Against a backdrop of social exclusion and poverty, with an unemployment rate of 40 per cent — around four times the average for the country as a whole — perpetrators were able to operate with total impunity. Of over 2, investigations opened on disappearances in the city over the previously two decades, reportedly not a single one had led to a conviction.
Since then, while gang violence remains a challenge, security has nevertheless greatly improved — with activists fleeing persecution elsewhere in the country settling in the city. Despite this worrying global situation, we reaffirm our commitment to safeguarding the rights of minority and indigenous communities and implementing indivisible human rights for all.
Sign up to Minority rights Group International's newsletter to stay up to date with the latest news and publications. Since August, MRG has been assisting Afghan minority activists and staff from our partner organizations as their lives and their work came under threat with the return of the Taliban. We need your help.
For the last three years, we at MRG have run projects promoting freedom of religion and belief across Asia. In Afghanistan we have fostered strong partnerships with amazing local organizations representing ethnic and religious minorities. They were doing outstanding work, educating minority community members about their rights, collecting evidence of discrimination and human rights abuses, and carrying out advocacy.
Not all have been able to flee. Many had no option but to go into hiding. Some did not have a valid passport. Activists can no longer carry out the work they had embarked on. They can no longer draw a salary, which means they cannot feed their families. With a season of failed crops and a cold winter ahead, the future is bleak for too many.
We refuse to leave Afghanistan behind. We are asking you today to stand by us as we stand by them. We will also use your donations to support our Afghan partners to pay their staff until they can regroup and make new plans, to use their networks to gather and send out information when it is safe to do so, and to seek passports and travel options for those who are most vulnerable and who have no option but to flee to safety.
Azadeh worked for a global organization offering family planning services. Standing for everything the Taliban systematically reject, Azadeh had no option but to flee to Pakistan. MRG is working with our partners in Pakistan to support many brave Afghans who have escaped Afghanistan because of their humanitarian or human rights work or their faith. They are now in various secure locations established by our local partners on the ground in Pakistan.
Although they are safer in Pakistan than Afghanistan, Hazara Shia and other religious minorities are also persecuted there. We need your help, to support those who put their lives on the line for basic human rights principles we all believe in: equality, mutual respect, and freedom of belief and expression.
The situation on the ground changes daily as more people arrive and some leave. Aluminium mining in Baphlimali, India, has caused environment devastation and has wrecked the lifestyle of thousands of Adivasis. For centuries, Adivasi communities like the Paraja, Jhodia, Penga and Kondh have been living amidst the Baphlimali foothills. For generations they have lived in harmony with nature.
They lived through rain fed subsistence agriculture of millet, cereals, pulses, rice and collection of non-timber forest produce, e. With widespread mining activities and linked deforestation, they have lost access to forest products and to the much needed pasture land in the vicinity of their villages. Your help will mean that MRG can support communities like these to help decision makers listen better to get priorities right for local people and help them to protect their environment and restore what has been damaged.
The above picture is of a tribal woman forcibly displaced from her home and land by District Forest Officers in the district of Ganjam, Odisha. Her cashew plantation burned in the name of protection of forests. Please note that the picture is to illustrate the story and is not from Baphlimali. Esther is a member of the indigenous Ogiek community living in the Mau Forest in Kenya.
Her family lives in one of the most isolated and inaccessible parts of the forest, with no roads, no health facilities and no government social infrastructure.
The Ogiek were evicted from some forest areas, which have since been logged. The Ogiek consider it essential to preserve their forest home; others are content to use it to make money in the short term. Esther has a year-old daughter living with a physical disability who has never attended basic school, as it is over 12 kilometres away. Young children living in these areas face challenges such as long distances to school, fears of assault by wild animals and dangers from people they may encounter on the journey.
Because the Ogiek have no legally recognised land rights, despite hundreds of years of residence in this forest, the government is refusing to provide social services or public facilities in the area. Ensuring that the Ogiek can access health services and education is essential and will mean that they can continue living on their land, protecting and conserving the environment there.
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