Aerial fumigation is contributing to the worst recent humanitarian crisis in Colombia, experts say

The 2006 CAN delegation went to Nariño and met with campesinos who were organizing against and spoke out against the fumigation efforts of the US & Colombian governments.

Meredith Aby
Colombia Action Network

Aerial fumigation is contributing to the worst recent humanitarian crisis in
Colombia, experts say
Published by WOLA & TransAfrica Forum, 4/7/07
http://www.wola.org/media/April%202007%20WOLA%20TAF%20Narino%20displacement.pdf

Washington, DC April 7-- In the last 15 days fighting between the Colombian
military and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the
activities of new illegal armed groups vying for control of drug routes is
reportedly generating the internal displacement of an estimated 7,000
people. The Colombian Department of Nariño is experiencing one of the worst
protection and humanitarian assistance crisis since Colombian President
Alvaro Uribe began his second term in office. The U.S. financed aerial
herbicide spray program (fumigations) compounds and exacerbates the myriad
of hardships that Afro-Colombian communities are already facing: racism,
disadvantaged access to state programs, food insecurity due to the internal
armed conflict, internal displacement and vulnerability to human rights
violations by the armed groups.

“The current crisis in Nariño illustrates that the fumigation effort just
makes matters worse for Afro-Colombians who wish to remain outside of the
conflict,” argues Gimena Sanchez, Colombia Senior Associate at the
Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).

WOLA and TransAfrica Forum (TAF) visited Nariño in March to meet with local
Afro-Colombian leaders who provided countless testimonies of how the U.S.
funded fumigation effort fails to deter the cultivation of coca. Yet it does
inflict tremendous damage on rural farmers’ food crops and their efforts to
grow legal crops to sustain themselves. In El Charco area, the Association
of Afrodescendant Women for Life (AMAV), an organization with hundreds of
members who are attempting to ensure food security for their families and
children and remain in their collective territories, informed the mission
that fumigation planes destroyed their crops on six occasions in the months
of February and March. WOLA and TAF were informed in numerous meetings that
the combination of the internal armed conflict, drug related violence, human
rights abuses committed by paramilitary groups that have re-grouped or not
fully dismantled their operational structures, fumigation efforts, and
declining respect for the land rights of Afro-Colombians linked to economic
projects such as the cultivation of “African” oil palm is devastating for
Afro-Colombian communities.

“U.S. counter-drug policies are a failure, the fumigation program is
destroying the livelihoods of Afro-descendants in Colombia. It is an outrage
that anti-drug tactics used by the governments of Colombia and the U.S.
destroy the lives of African descendants in both countries,” states Nicole
Lee, Executive Director of TransAfrica Forum.

Ms. Sanchez from WOLA points out: “U.S. policy makers must shift the
Colombia aid package in favor of programs that support the land rights and
alternative development proposals of ethnic minorities, as well as rights
based durable solutions to the internal displacement crisis.”

Since 2000, the U.S. has invested billions of dollars in aid to Colombia
heavily skewed (an estimated 80%) towards security assistance and the aerial
herbicide spraying of coca. Although one of the objectives of the aid is to
curb drug production, the aid has not met this goal. Despite the spraying of
over 2 million acres of illegal and legal crops in Colombia, cocaine
production remains robust and cocaine is as available as ever on
U.S. streets.

According to WOLA Senior Associate for Drug Policy John Walsh, “The
fumigation would be bad enough if it were simply wasteful and ineffective.
What do the Colombian and U.S. governments suppose will become of these
people? Fumigation isn’t the solution, it is part of the problem because it
deepens reliance on coca by pushing poor farmers into even more desperate
straits.”

For more information contact:
Joia Jefferson Nuri, Communications, TransAfrica Forum (240) 603-7905
Gimena Sanchez, Colombia Program, WOLA (202) 489-1702