Tribe Presents Historic Land Titles Granting Legal Ownership Including Sub-surface Rights
BOYACA, Colombia – The U’wa nation has rejected a call from the Colombian government to participate in a “prior consultation” about the Siriri/Catleya oil project on their cloudforest homelands and is calling for its cancellation.
In recent talks with the government, the U’wa presented colonial land titles which they claim uphold their sub-surface rights to their ancestral lands. This announcement is expected to further delay attempts by Ecopetrol, Colombia’s state-owned oil company, to move ahead with the project.
“We have decided not to permit petroleum activities on our sacred territory, Kera Chikara, and therefore, we believe that prior consultation as currently being applied by the Colombian Government limits our right to veto,” the U’wa High Council declared in a position statement.
The U’wa’s historic legal documents, dating back to the 18th and 19th Centuries, strike at the heart of the claims by the Colombian government that the rights to all sub-surface resources in national territory belong to the State. In the past, both the Colombian Council of State and Supreme Court have repeatedly upheld the colonial law.
The news emerged following a recent meeting between the U’wa, Ecopetrol and government representatives. More than 500 U’wa gathered to unanimously tell the officials that they would not participate in the consultation.
Prior consultation is a statutory requirement in Colombia for any infrastructure project that might adversely affect the territories of indigenous communities. It does not incorporate the right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), the global benchmark human rights standard that would allow the tribal authority to reject a damaging project. The U’wa, one of the most traditional indigenous communities in South America, believe oil drilling would devastate their environment, culture, and way of life.
The government delegation also received a report by Stanford Professor Terry Lynn Karl, an expert in the “resource curse”, that outlined how the project would devastate the lands and livelihoods of the U’wa, have negative environmental impacts, cause social and economic problems, and provoke increased violence.
For a copy of the U’wa position paper, visit:
http://www.amazonwatch.org/images/posicion.pdf