Colombia: activists victims of the peace agreement with the FARC

Among the "collateral effects" of the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC are the increasingly numerous killings of community social leaders and human rights defenders. All ended up in the crosshairs of drug cartels for their efforts to replace coca plants with legal crops

Community social leaders and human rights defenders have been targeted by Colombian organized crime. And this situation has to do, paradoxically, precisely with the peace agreements that aimed to calm all the historically warring factions in the country.

The reason is easy to say: due to their commitment to the program for the replacement of coca plants with legal crops, the activists have, in spite of themselves, become the main protagonists in the fight against organized crime in the reorganization phase. Certainly, the most exposed ones. And the danger has grown with the inclusion of the plan for the eradication of coca in the peace treaty between the government and FARC.

March against the FARC in Medellin (2008) – Photo: Medea Material (via Flickr)

Among the criminal groups most active in the drug business today, there are first of all the former members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia who have decided not to join the peace process, which marks the end of the guerrilla political struggle, and who now dedicate themselves mainly to drug trafficking.

The "collateral" effect of the Farc-government peace treaty

Since December 2016, 217 social leaders and human rights activists have been victims of targeted executions in Colombia. A worrying surge, which followed the evolution of the negotiation of the treaty. And 2018 could be the darkest year yet.

In fact, in the first three months of 2018, 45 activists have already been killed. Almost double the 26 recorded in the first three months of 2017. And also growing on the 2016 quarterly figure of 31 murders. The increase between 2016 and 2017 was 32.5%, which also represents the highest peak in homicides recorded since Colombia began collecting these statistics in 2002.

Targeted executions were recorded in 24 of the 32 regional departments, which represent 70% of the national territory. The areas where the concentration of assassinations is greatest are those historically controlled by the FARC.

Drug cartels kill in the countryside

Mining, the struggle for land, hate crimes and corruption are some of the many atavistic problems of Colombian rural contexts, where social leaders and human rights defenders are often seen as obstacles or inconvenient characters. But in this case it is the interest of drug traffickers that has caused the escalation of violence.

The replacement of coca crops is part of point 4 of the "solution to the problem of illicit drugs" of the final agreement for the "resolution of the conflict and the construction of a stable and lasting peace" and is a special chapter of the rural reform implemented to improve the living conditions of rural communities, fighting the poverty that often motivates farmers to plant coca to sell to traffickers.

Drug trafficking: the opportunity for FARC escapees

The invitation to take away ground from coca represents a problem for the narcos. Especially for all those FARC dissidents who, not having joined the demobilization and reintegration program into Colombian society, see drug trafficking as the only solution for their future. The big opportunity.

Photo: Robert Thivierge (via Wikipedia)

Precisely in the areas previously under FARC rule, historically the most remote in the country, after the guerrilla war left the scene, new groups were born, in turn in cahoots with the National Liberation Army, the Gulf Clan narcos and other organizations. In a conflict fueled by the dispute over coca-cultivated lands, as well as for the laboratories for the transformation of coca leaves into cocaine and for the routes that lead through Panama to the United States of America market.