BOGOTA: Colombia is preparing to host this year's United Nations COP16 biodiversity conference and UK advocacy group Global Witness has rated the country as the deadliest for environmentalists and land rights defenders in 2023.
The right-wing group claimed that up to 79 activists were killed in the South American nation over the past year.
The number of environmental activists killed was the highest Global Witness has ever recorded for a single country in a given year since it began monitoring such killings in 2012, the organisation said in its annual report published on Monday.
“The figure is truly chilling,” said Laura Furones, senior adviser at the land and environmental campaigner Global Witness, adding that the report's conclusions were conservative and the figures likely incomplete.
Globally, 196 environmental and land activists were killed in 2023, according to Global Witness, with Latin America overwhelmingly topping the list, accounting for 85% of the killings.
The findings on Colombia stand in stark contrast to promises from the government of President Gustavo Petro, who took office in 2022 and pledged to end the country's 60-year conflict and seek environmental justice for communities.
Peace processes with several armed groups, which are sometimes implicated in killings of environmentalists, have failed, and although deforestation fell to a 23-year low last year, the environment ministry has warned of a rise in 2024.
It is “dishonorable” to top the Global Witness list, the Colombian government said in a statement released Monday evening.
“The national government recognizes the serious situation arising from socio-ecological conflicts associated with drug trafficking, extractive practices linked to illicit economies and the reconfiguration of the armed conflict,” the government added.
Colombia was also the deadliest country for environmental activists in 2022, according to Global Witness, when at least 60 were killed.
“The figure is very shameful for us in the country,” said Astrid Torres, coordinator of Somos Defensores, a Colombian human rights group.
Torres said that the issue is not only the responsibility of the current government but also of state institutions, such as prosecutors and local authorities.
A Colombian government spokesman said he was working on a response.
Last year a Reuters An investigation found that the murders of environmental activists in Colombia had lasting negative effects on conservation and that some municipalities where activists were killed experienced significant spikes in deforestation.
At an event to launch the COP 16 agenda in Bogota in July, Colombian Vice President Francia Marquez, winner of the Goldman environmental prize for activism in 2018, said the conference would honour those killed.
“My heart is filled with emotion to see this dream that environmental leaders have harbored for so many years, many of whom are no longer with us today, who were sadly murdered in our country,” she said, adding: “This global event is a tribute to those voices.”
