colombia

Witness for Peace first opened an office in Colombia in 2000, in order to document the human, social, and environmental consequences of US-sponsored Plan Colombia – a multi-billion dollar counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency package for the Colombian armed forces. Plan Colombia was intended to reduce Colombia’s cocaine production and bring peace and stability to a country experiencing an ongoing armed conflict between state security forces, various guerrilla armies, and paramilitary groups. Yet Plan Colombia’s overwhelming focus on military aid rather than social aid just made a dire situation even more precarious – fumigation and bombardment of vulnerable communities under the guise of counterinsurgency tactics just further increased mass displacement and human rights violations of especially vulnerable communities, including indigenous peoples, Afro-Colombians, and campesinos.

For more than a decade, Witness for Peace has documented one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises—Colombia is currently the country with the second largest internally displaced population in the world, following Syria. More than 6.9 million Colombians have been internally displaced by right-wing paramilitaries (often working in conjunction with Colombia’s US funded and trained military), left-wing insurgents, indiscriminate aerial fumigations, large-scale extractive industries and agro-fuel production. At every turn, US corporations have benefited from the violence and mass displacement, including Coca-Cola, Chiquita, Dole and Drummond Coal. 

In 2007, Witness for Peace organizers and allies achieved a major victory: the significant reduction of military aid to Colombia. However, this was a partial victory, and Witness for Peace continues educating US citizens on alternatives to militarization and fumigation, especially as a new wave of US intervention begins under a new US aid package known as “Plan Peace Colombia.”

Because sustainable solutions to poverty are a prerequisite for stopping the violence, Witness for Peace and our allies opposed the bilateral Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, implemented on May 15, 2012. This agreement, signed by Presidents Obama and Santos in 2011, was implemented without meaningful completion of the prerequisites in the Labor Action Plan.  It condoned Colombia’s status as the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists as an acceptable standard for US business alliances.

In addition to our on-the-ground documentation work, Witness for Peace organizes speaking tours for Colombian community leaders and activists to meet with people, organizations, and politicians in the U.S. The visiting speakers share their first-hand experience with US foreign policy and corporate practices in Colombia. We also bring US citizens to Colombia to witness the effects of these policies and practices on the country. Upon returning to the US, delegates join a network of more than 20,000 activists giving testimony, lobbying Congress and using nonviolent direct action to demand just US foreign policies in Colombia.

In December 2024, after many years of reflection, the WFPSC staff and board have decided to close the WFPSC programs in Honduras and Colombia. The lack of operating capital, impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic, historical mismanagement and inability to provide the needed support to teams on the ground, have led to our decision to close these programs and keep only the Cuba program.