Colombian guerrillas withdraw threat to disrupt UN biodiversity summit

Central General Staff militant group previously said Cop16 event scheduled for October in Cali ‘would fail’

A dissident rebel group has backed down from its threat to disrupt the UN biodiversity summit in Colombia later this year.

The Central General Staff (EMC), a guerrilla faction that rejected the country’s 2016 peace agreement, said on Wednesday it would order its militants not to target the Cop16 negotiations that are due to begin in Cali in October.

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on X for all the latest news and features.

Continue reading...

US banana giant ordered to pay $38m to families of Colombian men killed by death squads

Landmark verdict against Chiquita marks first time major US company held liable for funding human rights abuses abroad

A Florida court has ordered Chiquita Brands International to pay $38m to the families of eight Colombian men murdered by a paramilitary death squad, after the US banana giant was shown to have financed the terrorist organisation from 1997 to 2004.

The landmark ruling late on Monday came after 17 years of legal efforts and is the first time that the fruit multinational has paid out compensation to Colombian victims, opening the way for thousands of others to seek restitution.

Continue reading...

Colombia ex-president Uribe to face trial for witness tampering and fraud

Álvaro Uribe, one of country’s most powerful figures, denies working with paramilitary death squads against leftist rebels

Colombia’s ex-president Álvaro Uribe will face trial for witness tampering and fraud, prosecutors have announced, once again casting the spotlight on allegations that the former leader partnered with paramilitary death squads in his war against leftist rebels.

Uribe has long been accused of committing a litany of crimes at the peak of Colombia’s six decades of brutal conflict, but has never been brought to trial, and remains one of the country’s most powerful political figures.

Continue reading...

Colombia’s president and ELN guerrillas agree six-month ceasefire

Talks in Cuba between Gustavo Petro and rebel leader Antonio García aimed at ending decades of conflict and follows Farc deal

Colombia’s government and its largest remaining guerrilla group have agreed to a six-month ceasefire at talks in Cuba, in the latest attempt to resolve a conflict dating back to the 1960s.

The government and the National Liberation Army, or ELN, announced the accord at a ceremony in Havana on Friday attended by Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, top guerrilla commander Antonio García and Cuban officials. The ceasefire takes effect in phases, goes fully into effect in August and then lasts for six months.

Continue reading...

Colombia to pay reparations for role in extermination of leftwing party

Inter-American Court of Human Rights concludes state allowed eradication of 6,000 Patriotic Union party members in 1980s

Colombia has pledged to pay reparations to victims after the inter-American court of human rights (IACHR) concluded the state allowed the systematic extermination of the leftwing Patriotic Union (UP) party in the 1980s and 90s.

The UP was a political party created out of a peace process with the Revolutionary Armed Forces (Farc) guerrillas in 1985 but 6,000 of its members were wiped out by rightwing paramilitaries, narcos and the Colombian military.

Continue reading...

Colombia to restart peace talks with the country’s largest active guerrilla group

Start date for dialogue with the National Liberation Army will be announced after first week of November

Colombia’s government and the nation’s largest remaining guerrilla group have announced that they will restart peace talks next month for the first time since 2018.

After meeting in Caracas, representatives of the Colombian government and the National Liberation Army issued a statement saying a start date for the peace talks would be announced after the first week of November. The statement added that Norway, Venezuela and Cuba would be “guarantor states” in the talks, and that the participation of civil society groups would be “essential” for the peace talks to succeed.

Continue reading...

Colombian leader’s promise of ‘total peace’ may prove too ambitious

Little-known militia groups have surfaced to declare their willingness to strike peace deals – and reap ceasefire rewards

The announcement came in a grainy video from the dense jungles of northern Colombia.

A dozen masked men with camouflage uniforms and automatic weapons stand in a cluster, a roaring stream washing over their black combat boots.

Continue reading...

‘We can transition to a better country’: a trans Colombian on diversity in ecology and society

Brigitte Baptiste has a high profile as a transgender Colombian woman and an ecologist – in a country where both are targeted

When Brigitte Baptiste walks on to the 10th floor of Bogotá’s Ean University at 9.45am in a plunging dress, knee-high cheetah-print boots and a silvery wig, the office comes to life. She examines some flowers sent by the Colombian radio station Caracol to thank her for taking part in a forum, her co-worker compliments her on her lipstick, and she settles in for a day of back-to-back meetings, followed by a private virtual conversation with the UN secretary general, António Guterres. Later that evening, she flies to Cartagena for a conference on natural gas.

The 58-year-old ecologist is one of Colombia’s foremost environmental experts, and one of its most visible transgender people, challenging scientific and social conventions alike. An ecology professor at the Jesuit-run Javeriana University for 20 years, she has written 15 books, countless newspaper columns, and won international prizes for her work. Most recently, she was appointed chancellor of Ean University, a business school, as part of its push for greater sustainability.

Continue reading...

US expected to remove Farc from international terrorist list

The announcement comes five years after the demobilised rebel group signed a peace deal with the Colombian government

The US is expected to remove the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) from its international terrorist list, five years after the demobilised rebel group signed a peace deal with the Colombian government and formed a political party.

The announcement is expected to bolster the struggling peace process, which has been implemented haltingly as violence from dissident rebel groups and drug traffickers continues to trouble the South American nation.

Continue reading...

Killing of two boys for alleged shoplifting shocks Colombia

Pair were taken away by armed men on motorbikes and later found shot dead on edge of town

The murder of two boys for allegedly shoplifting in Colombia has evoked memories of some of the country’s darkest days of armed conflict.

The pair, who were 12 and 18, were allegedly trying to rob a clothing store in Tibú, a small town near the Venezuelan border, last Friday when they were apprehended by bystanders who taped their hands together, according to witnesses quoted by local media.

Continue reading...

Colombian top general Mario Montoya faces murder charges in ‘false positives’ scandal

Uribe’s ‘hero of the homeland’ is alleged to have overseen the abduction and execution of up to 104 civilians – including five children

Gen Mario Montoya was the star soldier who oversaw the defeat of Latin America’s most powerful insurgency, a US-trained professional hailed for turning around a demoralized army and masterminding a string of brutal strikes against Colombia’s leftist guerrillas.

After taking command of the South American country’s army in 2006, he regularly appeared on television news, the face of a modern military who even spoke the language of human rights.

Continue reading...

‘In the middle of a war zone’: thousands flee as Venezuela troops and Colombia rebels clash

Nearly 5,000 refugees holed up in small Colombian town of Arauquita, having fled intense and continuing battles

Lizeth Iturrieta, a journalist in the small town of La Victoria on Venezuela’s western border with Colombia, was woken by the rumble of armoured vehicles rolling past her home. Hours later the sounds of gunfire and explosions shook the walls, and she and her husband dived for cover.

“Out of nowhere we were in the middle of a war zone,” Iturrieta said in a video call from a refugee camp on the Colombian side of the frontier. “After a day of hiding at home in absolute silence, we ran for our lives to the boat to Colombia. We almost fell into the river in the panic.”

Continue reading...

Two notorious Colombian warlords to face off in truth commission hearing

Rodrigo Londoño led the leftwing Farc guerrillas, while Salvatore Mancuso was head of a rightwing death squad during the civil war

Two of Colombia’s most notorious warlords will appear together before a truth commission on Thursday, in the latest move to shed light on crimes committed during decades of bloody civil war.

Rodrigo Londoño, better known by his wartime alias Timochenko, once led the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), in a bloody struggle against the Colombian state that left 260,000 dead.

Continue reading...

Colombia tribunal reveals at least 6,402 people were killed by army to boost body count

The killings, which took place between 2002 and 2008, were declared combat kills in order to boost statistics in war with rebel groups

A special peace tribunal in Colombia has found that at least 6,402 people were murdered by the country’s army and falsely declared combat kills in order to boost statistics in the civil war with leftist rebel groups. That number is nearly three times higher than the figure previously admitted by the attorney general’s office.

The killings, referred to in Colombia as the “false positives scandal”, took place between 2002 and 2008, when the government was waging war against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or Farc), a leftist guerrilla insurgency, which ultimately made peace with the government in 2016. Soldiers were rewarded for the manipulated kill statistics with perks, including time off and promotions.

Continue reading...

Colombia’s ex-guerrillas: isolated, abandoned and living in fear

A tumbledown camp is home to many former Farc rebels four years after peace accords while hundreds more have been killed

Daniela Márquez, 30, bears the scars of Colombia’s long civil war on her body. Until three years ago, she was a medic with what was then South America’s most powerful guerrilla army: the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

Five years ago, while her commanders were suing for peace, an airstrike killed seven of her comrades and hurled pieces of shrapnel into her arms, legs and back.

Continue reading...

The ‘false positives’ scandal that felled Colombia’s military hero

When the Colombian army defeated the Farc guerrillas, ending decades of conflict, General Mario Montoya was hailed a national hero. But then it was revealed that thousands of ‘insurgents’ executed by the army were in fact innocent men

On a chilly October afternoon in 2008, Jacqueline Castillo found herself staring down into a mass grave in Colombia’s northern region of Santander. Five bodies, naked and dirty, were squeezed together like sacks of potatoes. Forensic doctors, wearing white suits, masks and rubber gloves, were pulling them out, one by one. They placed them beside her, and asked her to examine their faces.

Castillo was looking for her brother, Jaime, who had disappeared a few months earlier in Bogotá, more than 600km away. His was the last body they pulled out. When he was placed on the ground next to her, Castillo fell to her knees, screaming. The doctors told her he was a criminal, a member of one of the many guerrilla armies that had been fighting the Colombian state since the mid-1960s, and that he had been killed in combat. But Castillo knew that was impossible. Her brother had been a homeless beggar, not a guerrilla insurgent.

Continue reading...

Armed groups target Colombia’s children as reform process slows

For families in province of Cauca, time is running out as drug gangs and guerrilla groups exploit Covid chaos


Luis Troches was walking home from the shop in late July when armed men stopped him along a dirt road in south-west Colombia. They gave the 14-year-old an ultimatum: he could join their group – dissidents from the demobilised Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) – or they could take him and his 11-year-old sister by force.

“He came home scared and distant,” said his mother, Luzmery. Both knew that the men, who control their hamlet in the north of Cauca province, would be back for an answer. “He told me, ‘I don’t want to go. What should I do?’”

Continue reading...

‘We have a right to be at the table’: four pioneering female peacekeepers

Twenty years after a landmark UN resolution, leading figures share insight on women’s vital role in mediating conflict

In October 2000, the UN security council adopted resolution 1325 – the first resolution that acknowledged women’s unique experience of conflict and their vital role in peace negotiations and peacebuilding. Twenty years on, we speak to four women helping keep the peace around the world.

Continue reading...

Colombia sees seven massacres in two weeks as wave of violence grips country

At least 39 people have been killed in the recent spate of unrest and the country has seen 46 massacres so far this year

A wave of massacres in which dozens of people have been killed across Colombia has prompted fears that the South American nation remains unable to turn the page on its decades-long civil war.

In the latest incident, the bodies of three young men were found late on Tuesday near a road outside Ocaña, a city near the country’s eastern border with Venezuela.

Continue reading...