The Colombian Caravana, together with ABColombia have filed an amicus at the Colombian Constitutional Court in a claim brought by the Wayúu indigenous communities of Paradero and La Gran Parada against Carbones del Cerrejón Limited, the National Environmental Licensing Authority, the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development and others.

In 2017, indigenous communities from an arid, semi-desert area in the northeast of Colombia successfully argued before the country’s Constitutional Court that a British-owned coal mining company should halt its proposed diversion of a local river, pending further investigations. The Court ordered the company, Carbones del Cerrejón (Cerrejón Coal), to create an ‘inter-institutional round table’ and involve the communities, civil society organisations, academics, and other experts, to agree a way forward. The communities have subsequently complained that the company has failed to involve them sufficiently, and instead completed the diversion of the river, which has subsequently run dry.

The communities, that are under threat due to climate change, are represented by a Colombian NGO, CAJAR, which has filed a claim for provisional measures in the Constitutional Court, on the basis that the Court’s judgment has not been respected.

The Colombian Caravana and ABColombia instructed the King’s Human Rights and Environment Clinic to submit an urgent amicus curiae intervention to the Constitutional Court. The legal submission was drafted by barristers Jelia Sane, Dr Keina Yoshida and Camila Zapata Besso of Doughty Street Chambers, on behalf of ABColombia and the Colombia Caravana UK Lawyers Group, with technical assistance from London Mining Network.

The amicus was initially filed in 2020. It was re-filed on 24 May 2022 in the Constitutional Court of Colombia in the wake of international arbitration claims by Cerrejón’s parent company against the Colombian state. The amicus is published here in Spanish and English.

The amicus provides an independent analysis of applicable principles under international human rights and international environmental law. These include the precautionary principle, which requires parties to adopt protective measures where there is a strong suspicion of potential harm, and the prevention principle, which states that it is better to avoid damage than to allow it and then deal with the consequences.