Siona Indigenous guards in southern Colombia are raising alarm that landmines and armed groups are cutting off their families from natural resources and trapping them in small portions of their territory. It’s been an ongoing problem for decades, Mongabay contributor Jose Guarnizo reported. In August 2024, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) expanded its recommendation for precautionary measures after dissident factions of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC in Spanish) fought over “land corridors and river routes” for cocaine trafficking, trapping local people in their conflict in the process. According to the Somos Defensores program, a Colombia-based human rights defenders organization, at least 70 Indigenous guards have been killed in the last 10 years by armed groups, including the Carolina Ramírez Front 1 and the Border Command, both offshoots of the now-dissolved FARC. More than a year after the IACHR recommendation, Siona’s leaders reported that the same risks remain as community members cannot reach their rivers, hunt in their forests or practice cultural and spiritual rites without facing the risk of getting caught in crossfire or stepping on a landmine. “One way or another, they have caused us to lose our rights,” one Indigenous guard in Buenavista, who was not named for safety reasons, told Mongabay reporter Daniela Quintero Díaz in another story. Two Siona leaders told Guarnizo that the conflict is also getting in the way of the Siona’s 52,000 hectares (128,500 acres) land titling claim that was filed with Colombia’s land agency in 2014. Many…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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