PEASANT AND ETHNIC-TERRITORIAL RIGHTS

In SIEMBRA we are aware of the impact that the implementation of extractive economies generates in ethnic and peasant communities. It is the territories inhabited by these communities that, for the most part, are destined for the execution of mining, hydrocarbon, agro-industrial and large-scale energy generation projects, in an unconsulted manner and in open disregard of their social, cultural and economic vocation. Extractivism has also deepened situations of exploitation and cultural domination to which both the peasantry and ethnic groups have historically been subjected.

Likewise, due to the historical and socio-political characteristics of marginalization and exclusion of these territories, local communities have been subjected to violence by armed groups, which have established close links with extractive economies, both legal and illegal, contributing to their imposition in the territories. This relationship has increased socio-environmental conflict, has seriously impacted the human rights of those who belong to these communities and the possibility of them developing their life plans autonomously and strengthening their political bets as collective subjects.

For this reason, we firmly believe in the need to strengthen and consolidate the territorial bets of these communities, which aim to live outside the violently imposed extractive economies that distance them from their ways of inhabiting the territory that allow them to live in conditions of dignity.

We approach this axis from the following lines of work:

In SIEMBRA we believe that the peasant and ethnic communities have made a contribution to the social and political history of the nation that has not been recognized. For this reason, we work, on the one hand, for the political and legal recognition of peasant communities, as social groups that have their own history and specific demands, and on the other, we work so that the legal and political recognition that indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombian communities already have is translated into concrete actions and policies that effectively guarantee their rights.

Recognizing the autonomous processes that ethnic and peasant communities have developed in the country, we work to support popular initiatives that include a cultural, political and economic claim for the territories.

In SIEMBRA we are aware of the structural violence that exists against certain social groups by virtue of their ethnicity, race, class, gender, among others, as well as the socio-political violence and the armed conflict that has been directed against people and groups that defend their own ways of life. For this reason, and understanding the existing intersections between such violence and the imposition of extractive economies, SIEMBRA is committed to proposing readings of the transformation and reality of the territories based on the interaction between structural violence, armed conflict and extractivism.

PUBLICATIONS

Peasant and Ethnic-Territorial Rights: The Struggles of Black, Indigenous, and Peasant Communities for Recognition

16/06/2023

This primer presents an overview of the struggles of black, indigenous and peasant communities in Colombia, with special emphasis on Chocó. These struggles are seen…

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