Colombia: consultation is a must!

From Colombia we heard news that a Judge in the region of Choco (situated in the west of Colombia on the Pacific coast) has suspended for six months the licenses, concessions and studies granted to mining in more than 50,000 hectares.

Going back to October 2012 the Land Unit from the Ministry of Agriculture filed a lawsuit against the National Mining Agency. At that time the Mining Agency has issued 13 titles covering 40,000 hectares, 13,000 of which were part of indigenous lands. The judge ordered security forces to recover, in the shortest time possible, the territory and ordered to the companies involved to withdraw personnel and machinery from the territory.

It is said, according to the Agencia Intercultutral de Noticias de Bolivia (AINI), the judge based the case on the fact that the Indigenous communities living in the area were never asked; in other words they were not consulted as required by the ILO Convention 169 and UNDRIP – both signed and ratified by Colombia.