Andean Group - November 2020

International NGO Global Witness has identified the Andean region as a hot spot for violence against environmental defenders – activists and community leaders fighting against environmental destruction and associated human rights abuses.... Read More

International NGO Global Witness reported in July that around the world, 212 environmental defenders – activists and community leaders fighting against environmental destruction and the human rights abuses that often go alongside – were killed in 2019.... Read More

Presidential corruption cases have become familiar fare in Peru; since 2000, four former presidents have been charged and arrested after leaving office, and a fifth, Alan García (1985-1990; 2006-2011), committed suicide before the police could detain him in 2019.... Read More

More than 700 prominent Colombian civil society organisations and campaigners signed a statement on 14 October condemning the government’s “authoritarian onslaught” on the country’s judicial institutions.... Read More

The role of foreign companies in the industrialisation of Bolivia’s huge reserves of lithium – a key component in the manufacture of batteries for mobile phones and electric vehicles – has been a salient issue in the country for many years, and was a prominent topic of discussion once again in the lead-up to Bolivia’s 18 October general election, in which Luis Arce and the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) unexpectedly secured a comfortable victory in the first round of voting.... Read More

In September, Ecuador’s constitutional court (CC) approved a referendum initiative to prohibit medium and large-scale metallic mining in areas surrounding the five rivers in Cuenca canton that provide water to the country’s third largest city, also named Cuenca, in Azuay province.... Read More

Katherine Polk Failla, a judge in the US Southern District Court of New York, ruled in October on an ongoing case relating to bonds issued this year by Venezuela’s state-owned oil company Pdvsa, declaring that the bonds in question are “valid and enforceable”.... Read More

COLOMBIA | Ecopetrol profits recover.... Read More