"With a hunger strike, they ask for measures for a poor region of Colombia", 12 October 2021

...Seven young people from the department of La Guajira, the northernmost of Colombia, have been on hunger strike for more than 20 days to pressure the Government to take “urgent measures to save” this region with large farms energy, but has one of the highest poverty rates.

...[F]rom the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), Bibiana Díaz recalled in a press conference that 5,000 children have died “due to state abandonment and hunger” since 2008, and that 365 indigenous people have already been murdered throughout the country. country after the signing of the peace agreement in 2016.

The Government must recognize the “historical debt” that it has with the towns of La Guajira because they “have been robbed of the transfers of royalties,” the tax from the oil and mining companies to the State, said the president of the Development Institute of Studies for Peace (Indepaz), Camilo González Posso.

With these royalties, the indigenous people would have more access to water, education or electricity, but nevertheless, the Government is occupying those territories “as if it were a wasteland,” González Posso denounced...