- The U’wa Indigenous people have waited almost 27 years for a decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to acknowledge the systematic violation of their rights by the Colombian government.
- The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled on Dec. 20, 2024 that Colombia violated their rights, including access to a healthy environment and children’s rights.
- Since the 1990s, the U’wa people have reported exploration and drilling for oil and gas in their territory. This activity, which has been done without free, prior and informed consent, has affected the lives of the U’wa people.
- The U’wa territory partially overlaps with El Cocuy National Park and with oil and gas blocks of great interest to Colombia.
On Dec. 20, 2024, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights publicly announced a landmark decision against the Colombian government and found it responsible for multiple human rights violations against the U’wa Indigenous people. In a more than 200-page document, the court determined there were violations of the right of access to a healthy environment, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, the self-determination of Indigenous peoples, collective property, political participation, access to information, participation in cultural life, children’s rights and judicial protection.
Months after the ruling, Indigenous communities are insisting on its implementation.
The U’wa Nation is located in eastern Colombia, across the departments of Arauca, Santander, Casanare, Northern Santander and Boyacá. The U’wa people have defended their ancestral territory and culture since the early 1990s, confronting tourism projects and the extraction of natural resources, such as oil and gas.
U’wa lawyer Juan Gabriel Jerez Tegria emphasized that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered the Colombian government to complete a number of tasks within two years: title the territory, clarify colonial titles, carry out a participatory process for the current extractive projects and guarantee that the projects located within in the U’wa reservation, or in adjacent areas, do not impact the U’wa people’s right to participate in their cultural life.
“For us, this decision means that our demands and our rights were acknowledged. This means that there is a precedent that allows [us] to make more just and direct complaints to the Colombian government in the face of human rights violations and infringements in our Indigenous communities,” Jerez Tegria said.
Juliana Bravo, the director of the Amazon Program at EarthRights International, an organization that has accompanied and given legal counsel to the Indigenous nation, mentioned that this process has been very long and many generations have participated in it.
“This ruling, in some way, is giving them back their faith in the justice system. This [involves] managing [to get] an international court to recognize their story and all that they have said for so many decades about the human rights violations they have endured,” Bravo said.
A long journey
The U’wa Indigenous people have been opposed to oil and gas exploration and extraction in their territory and have had to turn to international legal entities after exhausting all other legal options on a national level.
Heber Tegria Uncaria, the spokesperson for the U’wa people, told Mongabay Latam that between 1990 and 1993, several oil companies, including the Occidental Petroleum Corporation (OXY), started arriving in the Indigenous territory, where the Samoré oil block was located. It was projected to become one of the oil industry’s most promising oil blocks in Colombia.
“But for the U’wa Indigenous people, land is sacred and it is our mother. Oil is the blood of our Mother Earth and it cannot be exploited,” Tegria said. He added that it was at that time that the U’wa people began a process of resistance to stop their territory from “being desecrated and exploited.”
Soon after this, they combined their acts of resistance with an effort to gain legal protection. “We turned to the national justice organizations: the Ombudsman’s Office, then the courts and then to the highest courts in Colombia. There was so much legal discussion, but we still went without the guarantee of [our] rights to the territory and to free, prior and informed consent,” Tegria added.
The spokesperson for the U’wa people said that since the high courts did not guarantee those fundamental rights, they decided to bring the case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 1997. This process culminated in a decision by the court in 2024, almost 27 years later.
Juliana Bravo emphasized that since March 1997, the Colombian judicial system had already determined that extractive activities in U’wa territory were illegal. The Constitutional Court of Colombia announced a ruling in which it declared that the U’wa people’s right to prior consultation was violated and, therefore, that Agreement 169 (the Indigenous and Tribal People’s Convention, 1989) of the International Labor Organization was not fulfilled. This court ordered that the prior consultation be conducted, but this did not occur.
“There is a decision, but it is not being complied with, as projects continue to be done without consent and without the due judicial guarantees,” Bravo said. “There were also some mining projects and some complaints were made in the internal Colombian justice [system], but nothing has happened,” she said. Bravo added that the proceedings are open right now, but the judiciary has not responded. “That all opened the door to go to the Inter-American system,” Bravo said.
A territory that attracts extractive industries
Not long after the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ decision was made known, the Center for Law, Justice and Society (Dejusticia) confirmed in a statement that the U’wa Indigenous people are the first group in Colombia to have sued the Colombian government in this international court.
“Their victory opens the door to the reparations and protective measures to which this Indigenous people has a right and sets a favorable precedent so that other Indigenous peoples in Colombia and the region can turn to international entities with guarantees of justice and reparation,” they wrote.
The story of the U’wa people’s opposition has several chapters. In 1998, OXY also began exploration work in the area known as Gibraltar. Despite the U’wa people’s protests, two years later, the then-Colombian Institute of Agrarian Reform and the Ministry of Agriculture declared — without consulting the Indigenous people — that the area surrounding the Gibraltar drilling site was an “oil reserve area.”
Between 2002 and 2003, OXY abandoned the Samoré oil block, but it was granted to the state-owned company Ecopetrol, which re-demarcated it and divided it into two parts: the Sirirí block and the Catleya block.
Between 2004 and 2005, the Colombian government held meetings to spread the word of these two blocks, but the U’wa people rejected seismic exploration and any oil projects in their territory in general. In May 2005, however, the Ministry of the Interior and Ecopetrol determined that the Sirirí and Catleya blocks did not violate the rights of the U’wa people, and in 2006, the Council of State of Colombia (the country’s highest court) confirmed this assertion.
In 2008, the Colombian government granted a contract for the GKT-081 coal mining concession, which overlaps with the U’wa people’s territory. One year later, two additional coal mining concessions were granted. Colombia’s environment ministry granted Ecopetrol a license to construct the Gibraltar-Bucaramanga gas pipeline, which went into operation in April 2012.
Extractive projects in the U’wa people’s territory did not stop, and in 2012, the National Environmental Licensing Authority (ANLA) granted Ecopetrol a license for an exploratory drilling area in Magallanes, which is within the U’wa ancestral territory. At that time, the ANLA also warned that the environmental impact study was deficient and incomplete.
In addition to problems with extractive projects, the U’wa people are also in the midst of a conflict with Colombia’s National Natural Parks System, since part of their territory overlaps with El Cocuy National Park. Jerez mentioned that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ decision also requires that the Colombian government involve the U’wa people in the administration and conservation of this overlapping area of the park, in a way in which the U’wa worldview is taken into consideration.
Insisting on compliance
When the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ ruling was announced, the National Agency for Legal Defense of the State said in a statement that it “accepts the decision made by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and reiterates its commitment to comply with the stated orders.” The National Agency for Legal Defense of the State also “expresses a sentiment of solidarity and empathy for the U’wa Indigenous people and [is] convinced that this international entity’s decision will contribute to their comprehensive reparation.”
According to the U’wa spokespeople, this has been the only declaration by a government entity, but it does not mention when the public act of acknowledgement of international responsibility for the violation of the Indigenous people’s rights will take place. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights gave a one-year deadline for this obligation.
“We hope to meet with the government in the next few months to define a methodological route for the implementation of the decision, in which this government in particular [should] be consistent with all the declarations that it has made about the importance of recognizing Indigenous people’s rights,” Bravo said.
Bravo added that the U’wa people and the organizations that have supported them will supervise compliance with this decision before the deadlines set by the international court. She emphasized this because she has litigated cases in Colombia and other countries and has noticed that implementation is often late and, in general, deadlines are not met.
Bravo added that the largest problem is always the collection of issues having to do with structural matters, such as policy changes or revisions to laws, regulations and practices.
“For us, this is a step forward, and it’s a victory from the judicial point of view. However, we are also clear that we need to keep demanding that the government comply with what the Inter-American Court of Human Rights orders. It is a victory that, for now, is on paper,” Heber Tegria said.
Banner image: A member of the U’wa Indigenous group in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Image courtesy of Jorge Sánchez for EarthRights International.
Indigenous Amazonians win landmark ruling against mercury pollution in Colombia
