Jani Silva is a leading figure in the defense of the environment and the rights of peasant populations in the Putumayo region of southwestern Colombia. In particular, she denounces the damage caused by oil exploitation. "My whole life has changed radically. Even my figure has changed, I've put on 30 kilos ..."
The struggle has made her a target. As the head of a community organization, she has been receiving threats for nearly a decade. "Armed groups are threatening to kill her to silence one of Putumayo's loudest voices," said Amnesty International in 2020. On September 10, Silva again received a phone call promising to "blow her up, car and all."
In an attempt to find shelter, Silva left her farm and village. "I don't like the city," she said from Cali, where she is taking part in the 16th World Conference on Biodiversity (COP16). "You have to sacrifice your family, your work and your hobbies if you don't want those who commit violence to win. And even if they don't kill you with bullets, little by little they put an end to your existence as a farmer, to that direct contact you have with the land."
As the world gathers in Colombia for the COP, the country presents itself as a champion of biodiversity protection and calls for "making peace with nature." Yet it remains one of the most dangerous for environmentalists. In 2023, the British organization Global Witness recorded 79 murders there, or 40%> of all murders committed worldwide.
The figure is the highest ever recorded in any country since 2012, when Global Witness began monitoring. And over the period 2012-2024, Colombia also ranks first (with 461 murders), ahead of Brazil (401). In addition to murders, defenders are victims of "violence, intimidation, discrediting and criminalization campaigns," many of which go unreported.
A UN report, published just before the opening of COP16, confirmed this: Those who defend "the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment" or "the rights of land and territory" in Colombia are putting their lives and personal integrity at risk, according to the local office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
On Thursday, October 31, several dozen representatives of indigenous peoples and NGOs created a human chain in the heart of the Cali conference center, a stone's throw from the rooms where negotiators are trying to agree on how to implement their biodiversity commitments. Everyone held up a photograph of a victim. Alexandra Mestre, a native of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, a mountain range in the Andes, is holding Miller Correia's in her hands. "He's a brother from Colombia who disappeared [in March 2022]," she said. "He was fighting against mining and large-scale agriculture in the department of Cauca, in the south of the country."
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