By Luis Jaime Acosta
BOGOTA (Reuters) – The human rights ombudsmen of Colombia and Ecuador on Tuesday launched a joint alert system to prevent abuses by illegal armed groups from affecting Awa Indigenous communities that live along the countries’ shared border.
The alert system will inform military leaders and government officials in both countries of potential attacks and human rights abuses in a bid to prevent them, the ombudsmen said in a press conference in Colombia’s capital Bogota.
Both sides of the border see activity by Colombian illegal armed groups, including the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas and FARC dissidents who reject a 2016 peace deal with the state, as well as criminal gangs who carry out drug trafficking and illegal mining, according to security sources.
Some 29,000 Indigenous Awa people live along the border and are subject to killings, forced displacement, land mines and recruitment of minors, among other ills, by armed groups, Colombia’s ombudsman said.
“The possibility of carrying out their operations along a porous border – with gaps in state presence – favors the interests of illegal groups,” Colombia’s Ombudsman Carlos Camargo said.
Armed groups hide arms and combatants on the Ecuadorean side of the border, Camargo added.
Some seven or eight Awa minors are recruited each month, Camargo said, adding that 14 Indigenous community members were reported murdered last year, while 10,000 were subject to forced displacement or confinement.
Camargo called on the armed groups to stop attacks on Indigenous communities and accede to policies of total peace pushed by the government of Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro.
“We want to warn the Colombian state and the Ecuadorean state about these human rights violations … so that the necessary urgent measures are taken to avoid violations continuing,” said Ecuador’s rights ombudsman Cesar Cordova Valverde.
(Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta; Writing by Oliver Griffin; Editing by Richard Chang)
