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BOGOTA, Colombia -- The United Nations quality rights bureau successful Colombia warned Tuesday that 5 Indigenous groups successful a storied upland scope look “physical and cultural” extinction, a captious menace that stems from equipped groups warring implicit their territory and insufficient authorities protection.
Scott Campbell, Colombia’s typical for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said successful a connection that the hazard of carnal and taste extinction of Indigenous People of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is "an ongoing calamity that we tin and indispensable prevent.”
Campbell urged the Colombian authorities to support the Kogui, Wiwa, Kankuamo, Arhuaco, and Ette Naka Indigenous groups, whose combined colonisation is astir 54,700 people.
Campbell's connection followed a sojourn to the Sierra Nevada region, wherever U.N. officials spoke with representatives of these Indigenous tribes.
“These groups are nether assorted forms of cruel onslaught from non-state equipped groups," Campbell said, highlighting the “devastating repercussions connected their lives, their land, their territory, their aforesaid government...and their spirituality.”
In 2022, UNESCO added the ancestral cognition of these Indigenous groups to its Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity list. The designation highlights the “fundamental role” their traditions play successful preserving the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta — a upland scope that emerges straight from the Caribbean Sea and boasts snowy peaks reaching astir 6,000 meters.
But for galore years, the Indigenous radical of the Sierra Nevada person been nether onslaught from settlers, and present from rebel groups.
Campbell said that rebel groups successful the country are imposing curfews connected Indigenous communities and interfering with their section assemblies. He added that hundreds of Indigenous radical from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta person been forcibly displaced, portion past twelvemonth an Arhuaco assemblage person was murdered and a subordinate of the Kogui people disappeared.
Colombia’s authorities has struggled to pacify agrarian areas wherever rebel groups and cause trafficking gangs fight for territory abandoned by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the ample guerilla radical that made bid with the authorities successful 2016.
President Gustavo Petro has launched bid talks with astir of the nation’s remaining rebel groups, but the negotiations person yielded fewer results truthful far.
Campbell urged the authorities to support Indigenous radical successful the Sierra Nevada not lone done subject force, but by providing amended entree to healthcare, acquisition and employment opportunities.
“The convulsive concern has its roots successful disputes implicit power of territory, cause trafficking routes and assorted forms of illicit economical enactment by non-state equipped groups.” Campell said.
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