Sikuani Indigenous People in Colombia continue to demand territorial rights recognition and denounce severe harms caused by agro-industrial colonisation

The High Court has ordered the ANT’s Ethnic Directorate to ensure full attention to the Sikuani appeal calling for revocation of the ANT decision. It has also called on the ANT directly to ensure implementation and expedited processes for the protection of Sikuani rights of ancestral possession over their territory within the deadlines and conditions established under legal Decree 2333 of 2014, which provides guarantees for ‘Legal Security and Effective Protection of lands and territories ancestrally and traditionally occupied and possessed by Indigenous Peoples.’

In March 2024, within the framework of advocacy actions carried out by the CNTI and the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), both organisations and the local NGO ‘We are Defenders” joined the Sikuani organisation UNUMA in carrying out a fact finding press field mission in Meta department, which documented ongoing land expropriation and serious damages to Sikuani territories, traditional livelihood resources and fundamental freedoms caused by the illegal enclosure of lands and agroindustrial cultivation practices inflicted on Sikuani customary landowners by Mennonite agribusiness colonists and companies.  Security companies are now denying Sikuani access to their territory through imposed checkpoints set up by La Fazenda company and Mennonite religious communities, which are controlling access along roads and customary rights of way. The CNTI-Sikuani mission additionally found that:

 

…the (agro-industrial) burning of savannahs and gallery forests,…constant ploughing, the use of lime to modify the acidity of the soil and the spraying of crops grown by the Mennonite community, have not only caused environmental loss and damage to the land and its substrates, to the flora and fauna, to the groundwater, to watersheds and to savannah forests, they have additionally interrupted territorial relations and caring for nature, and adversely infringed on the rights of the indigenous communities to health, food systems and autonomy.” (CNTI-UNUMA Press statement, March 2024)

 

Scarcity in local fish and game animals and displacement from their lands caused by destructive large-scale agro-industrial development has led to hunger and deprivation, driving some Sikuani to beg for food on the streets of local towns.  Following the field mission, the Sikuani again publicly called on the Colombian State to uphold their legitimate rights protected under national and international law:

 

We ask the Colombian State to comply with the guarantees for the protection of the territorial and fundamental rights of the Sikuani people protected under the Constitution, international conventions and other normative instruments. Defending territories is defending life! (CNTI-UNUMA Press statement, March 2024)

 

More information:

Land Expropriation in the Altillanura and the Violation of the Territorial Rights of the Indigenous Sikuani People, CNTI-UNUMA Press Communication, April 2024. 

Ruling in favour of the territorial rights of the Barrulia community of the Sikuani indigenous people, CNTI Press Note, 28 May 2024 (only available in Spanish)