BOGOTA, Colombia — The United Nations human rights workplace in Colombia warned Tuesday that 5 Indigenous teams in a storied mountain vary face “bodily and cultural” extinction, a vital menace that stems from armed teams preventing over their territory and inadequate state safety.
Scott Campbell, Colombia’s consultant for the UN Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights, mentioned in an announcement that the chance of bodily and cultural extinction of Indigenous Folks of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is “an ongoing tragedy that we are able to and should forestall.”
Campbell urged the Colombian authorities to guard the Kogui, Wiwa, Kankuamo, Arhuaco, and Ette Naka Indigenous teams, whose mixed inhabitants is roughly 54,700 individuals.
Campbell’s assertion adopted a go to to the Sierra Nevada area, the place U.N. officers spoke with representatives of those Indigenous tribes.
“These teams are below varied types of merciless assault from non-state armed teams,” Campbell mentioned, highlighting the “devastating repercussions on their lives, their land, their territory, their self authorities…and their spirituality.”
In 2022, UNESCO added the ancestral data of those Indigenous teams to its Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity record. The popularity highlights the “elementary position” their traditions play in preserving the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta — a mountain vary that emerges immediately from the Caribbean Sea and boasts snowy peaks reaching practically 6,000 meters.
However for a few years, the Indigenous individuals of the Sierra Nevada have been below assault from settlers, and now from insurgent teams.
Campbell mentioned that insurgent teams within the space are imposing curfews on Indigenous communities and interfering with their native assemblies. He added that a whole lot of Indigenous individuals from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta have been forcibly displaced, whereas final yr an Arhuaco neighborhood chief was murdered and a member of the Kogui tribe disappeared.
Colombia’s authorities has struggled to pacify rural areas the place insurgent teams and drug trafficking gangs fight for territory deserted by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the big guerilla group that made peace with the government in 2016.
President Gustavo Petro has launched peace talks with many of the nation’s remaining insurgent teams, however the negotiations have yielded few outcomes thus far.
Campbell urged the federal government to guard Indigenous individuals within the Sierra Nevada not solely by navy power, however by offering higher entry to healthcare, schooling and employment alternatives.
“The violent state of affairs has its roots in disputes over management of territory, drug trafficking routes and varied types of illicit financial exercise by non-state armed teams.” Campell mentioned.
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