Category Archives: Colombia

Colombia joins international alliance calling for treaty to end use of fossil fuels

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Colombian president Gustavo Petro wants treaty to lay out plan to end era of coal, oil and gas

Colombia has formally joined an alliance of nations calling for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty to prevent the “omnicide of planet Earth”, the country’s president announced at Cop28.

At the climate summit in Dubai, Gustavo Petro has said his country would join a group of nations calling for a new body to manage a global transition away from the primary driver of global heating, akin to previous treaties to reduce nuclear weapon arsenals and landmines.

Cop28: Can fossil fuel companies transition to clean energy?
On Tuesday 5 December, 8pm-9.15pm GMT, join Damian Carrington, Christiana Figueres, Tessa Khan and Mike Coffin for a livestreamed discussion on whether fossil fuel companies can transition to clean energy. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live

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Rapists and kidnappers increasingly targeting migrants crossing Darién Gap

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As record numbers make the perilous journey between Colombia and Panama, Médecins Sans Frontières is treating far more survivors of sexual violence, including children

Armed bandits are exploiting the record number of people crossing the Darién Gap – a 100km stretch of jungle connecting Colombia and Panama – to kidnap and rape desperate migrants, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

The organisation said it treated 397 survivors of sexual violence this year – many of them children – once they safely reached Panama. There have been reports of “group rapes in tents set up for that purpose in the mountainous rainforest and swampland”.

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‘Very difficult’: father of Luis Díaz speaks for first time after release by Colombia guerillas

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Luis Manuel Díaz has described how he spent 12 days trekking through mountains with almost no sleep

The father of Liverpool footballer Luis Díaz has spoken publicly of how he endured almost two weeks of arduous treks and sleepless nights while held captive by armed guerrillas on the Colombian-Venezuelan border.

Luis Manuel Díaz, 58, said: “It was a lot of horseback riding, really hard, a lot of mountains, a lot of rain, too many insects.” A weak Díaz, who was helped to and from a chair by his family, told journalists in his home town of Barrancas in Colombia: “I couldn’t sleep peacefully, it was very difficult, almost 12 days without sleep.”

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Colombia passes ambitious ‘junk food law’ to tackle lifestyle diseases

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The Latin American country is one of the first in the world to introduce a health tax targeting ultra-processed foods

A new law in Colombia making it one of the first countries in the world to explicitly tax ultra-processed food has been hailed by campaigners and health experts who say it could set an example for other countries.

After years of campaigning, the “junk food law” came into force this month and a levy will be introduced gradually. An additional tax on affected foods will begin at 10% immediately, rising to 15% next year and reaching 20% in 2025.

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Rebel group claims military action delaying release of Luis Díaz’s father

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  • Liverpool player’s father kidnapped in Colombia
  • Group warns military in local area putting him at risk

The rebel group holding Luis Díaz’s father claims military action in the local area is not only delaying the release of their hostage but putting him at risk. Díaz’s parents were kidnapped more than a week ago – his mother was freed quickly – and despite pledges from the National Liberation Army of Colombia (ELN) to expedite the return of Díaz Sr, it is taking longer than expected.

“On November 2, we informed the country of the decision to release Mr Luis Manuel Díaz, father of the player Luis Díaz,” said a statement, signed by the unit leader, Commander Jose Manuel Martinez Quiroz.

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South American countries recall ambassadors and cut ties with Israel over war with Hamas

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Bolivia’s leftwing government cuts diplomatic ties with Israel, alleging crimes and human rights abuses in Gaza, as Chile and Colombia recall ambassadors

A number of South American countries have registered diplomatic protests against Israel, in response to its latest conflict with Hamas, with Bolivia’s leftwing government cutting ties entirely and attributing its decision to alleged war crimes and human rights abuses being committed in the Gaza Strip.

The decision by Bolivia was announced at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon by María Nela Prada, a minister in President Luis Arce’s administration. “We demand an end to the attacks on the Gaza Strip which have so far claimed thousands of civilian lives and caused the forced displacement of Palestinians,” the minister told reporters in her country’s de facto capital, La Paz.

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Colombian ex-army officer gets life in prison for killing of Haiti president Jovenel Moïse

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Retired army officer Germán Alejandro Rivera García, 45, is second of 11 suspects detained and charged in Miami

A retired Colombian army officer has been sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 2021 assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse, which caused unprecedented turmoil in the Caribbean nation.

Germán Alejandro Rivera García, 45, is the second of 11 suspects detained and charged in Miami to be sentenced in what US prosecutors have described as a conspiracy hatched in both Haiti and Florida to hire mercenaries to kidnap or kill Moïse, who was slain at his private home near the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on 7 July 2021.

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Environmental crime money easy to stash in US due to loopholes, report finds

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Secrecy and lax oversight mean illegal loggers and miners in Amazon can park billions in real estate and other assets

Secrecy and lax oversight have made the US a hiding place for dirty money accrued by environmental criminals in the Amazon rainforest, a report says.

Illegal loggers and miners are parking sums ranging from millions to billions of dollars in US real estate and other assets, says the report, which calls on Congress and the White House to close loopholes in financial regulations that it says are contributing to the destruction of the world’s biggest tropical forest.

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Argentina: leftists celebrate after far-right Milei fails to win election victory

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Lula and other Latin American leftwingers hail Sergio Massa’s first-placed finish, with election now headed to November runoff

Leading Latin American leftists have celebrated the thwarting of Javier Milei’s attempt to claim a first-round victory in Argentina’s presidential election after the far-right populist was beaten by his centrist rival Sergio Massa.

Milei, an oddball economist who has called climate change a “socialist lie” and the pope “a lefty son of a bitch”, had hoped an explosion of anti-establishment rage would catapult him into the presidency on Sunday as 27 million Argentinians turned out to vote amid the country’s worst economic crisis in decades.

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Israel and Colombia in ferocious diplomatic spat over Hamas war

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Colombia’s president likens Israel’s actions to Nazis as Israel accuses Gustavo Petro of putting Jewish lives in danger

The Israel-Hamas war has sparked a ferocious diplomatic spat between Israel and Colombia, with Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, likening Israel’s actions to those of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis and Israel accusing Petro of putting Jewish lives in danger and encouraging “the horrific acts of Hamas terrorists” with his “hostile and antisemitic statements”.

The row began one day after Hamas’s unprecedented 7 October attacks when Petro used his official X account to denounce what he called “neo-Nazi” efforts to destroy the Palestinian people, freedom and culture.

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Six suspects in murder of Ecuador presidential candidate killed in prison, authorities say

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The six Colombians had been arrested on the day Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead in August

Six men suspected of involvement in the August murder of Ecuador’s anti-corruption presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio have been killed in prison, the prisons agency has said, barely a week before a crucial run-off election.

The killings took place on Friday in a penitentiary in Guayaquil, the South American country’s largest city, the attorney general’s office announced earlier.

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Unicef sounds alarm as record numbers of children cross dangerous Darién Gap

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Children risking lives to migrate across Latin America and Caribbean, with aid groups warning they cannot cope

Record numbers of children are migrating across Latin America and the Caribbean with more than 60,000 children risking life and limb to cross the treacherous Darién Gap jungle pass this year, according to a new Unicef report.

Sounding the alarm over the rising number of youngsters on the move, the UN’s children’s agency said at least 92 migrant children had died or gone missing last year – more than any other year since 2014.

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‘We can’t keep up’: Panama-Colombia border sees record number of migrants

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In August, 50,000 people fleeing northward were met with long lines for medical attention, a lack of water and sleeping spaces

Medical non-governmental organizations (NGOs) attending to injured and sick migrants crossing the Darién Gap are increasingly unable to manage the record number of people taking the perilous journey, according to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the United Nation high commissioner for human rights.

In August 50,000 people took the week-long trek through the dense jungle connecting Colombia and Panama, outstretching the capacity of MSF’s staff at medical treatment posts on the Panamanian border.

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Colombia’s leftwing president rocked by spiralling narco cash allegations

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Drug money claims involving Gustavo Petro’s son Nicolás could hamper progressive agenda

The lawyer representing a businessman accused of financing killings by paramilitary death squads has admitted that his client donated money to the campaign of Colombia’s first ever leftwing president, Gustavo Petro.

Alfonso Hilsaca knowingly gave 400m pesos ($95,000) to Gustavo Petro’s eldest son as a donation to his father’s electoral campaign, his lawyer said this week – though he said Hilsaca had not expected Nicolás Petro to steal the money for himself.

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Andrea González picked to replace Ecuador’s assassinated presidential candidate

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Fernando Villavicencio fatally shot last week after leaving a campaign event in capital, Quito

The political party of Ecuador’s assassinated presidential hopeful, Fernando Villavicencio, picked its vice-presidential candidate to replace him on Saturday, just a week before the election.

Villavicencio’s Build party, or Construye in Spanish, announced on social media that Andrea González was replacing the 59-year-old as its presidential candidate in the 20 August vote.

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Amazon leaders fail to commit to end deforestation by 2030

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Eight South American presidents including Brazil’s Lula say rich countries need to pledge more resources to help protect rainforest

Amazon leaders have called on rich countries to help them develop a Marshall-style plan to protect the world’s largest rainforest – but stopped short of committing to zero deforestation across the biome by 2030 amid divisions over oil extraction.

In a joint declaration at the end of a two-day summit in the Brazilian city of Belém on Wednesday, the eight South American countries that are home to the Amazon rainforest said ensuring its survival could not be solely up to them, as resources from the forest were consumed globally.

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UN bodies call for urgent action over Panama’s Darién Gap migration route

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UN Refugee Agency and IOM urge steps – including more legal pathways for migrants – to curb humanitarian crisis

International bodies have called for urgent intervention in the Darién Gap to prevent a further escalation of a humanitarian crisis as new figures showed that record numbers of people are risking their lives to cross the lawless 100-mile stretch of rainforest between Panama and Colombia.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) also called for the creation of more legal pathways to migrate to the US in order to help reduce irregular migration.

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Colombian president’s son arrested in money-laundering inquiry

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Nicolás Petro held as part of investigation into funds he allegedly collected from drug traffickers during 2022 election campaign

The son of the Colombian president has been arrested as part of a high-profile money-laundering investigation into funds he allegedly collected from convicted drug traffickers during last year’s presidential campaign.

The president, Gustavo Petro, a former rebel who rose through Colombia’s political ranks as an anti-corruption crusader, said he would not interfere with the investigation.

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‘Insult to his victims’: outrage as warlord appointed ‘peace manager’ in Colombia

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Salvatore Mancuso, who is imprisoned in US, is responsible for more than 300 killings and is accused of about 75,000 crimes

Salvatore Mancuso is one of the most notorious figures in Colombia’s six decades of conflict, responsible for some of the most heinous of crimes during the darkest chapters in the country’s history.

As a senior commander of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) – the country’s largest rightwing death squad – he ordered forced disappearances, sexual violence and massacres of civilians.

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Venezuela’s ex-spy chief extradited from Spain to US to face drug charges

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Hugo Carvajal, intelligence leader under Hugo Chávez, accused of providing support to drug trafficking by rebel Farc group

Venezuela’s former intelligence chief has been extradited from Spain to the United States where he is wanted on drug trafficking charges, his lawyer and judicial sources said.

Gen Hugo Armando Carvajal, who served as intelligence chief under the former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, has long been sought by US Treasury officials who suspect him of providing support to drug trafficking by the now disarmed Farc guerrilla group in Colombia.

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