UK products fund Colombia’s brutal palm oil regime

Colombian troops outside a public meeting held by WOW’s partner organisation, Palenque el Congal. Photo:WOW/Paul Moon.

The production of palm oil is leaving increasing devastation in its wake, and UK shoppers are warned today that the devastation is both environmental and human.

Paramilitaries in Colombia have been murdering hundreds, and forcing thousands, of poor people off their land to facilitate palm oil plantations - and fuel and other products on sale in Britain may contain the yield from this regime. The warning comes from the charity War on Want in its new report, Fuelling Fear: The human cost of biofuels in Colombia.

According to the report, Colombia's armed forces are colluding with right-wing paramilitaries targeting Afro-Colombians in the rush for biofuels. It is claimed that as much as 70 per cent of the population of Nariño in Colombia's south-west Pacific region has been forced off its land.

Mario Angulo Sanclemente, who works for War on Want's partner organisation Palenque el Congal, said: ‘The displacement of black communities in the Pacific area is state policy. One way of silencing the opposition is to destroy the social organisations and to move communities off their land.’

Less than two years ago, the UK government admitted that increased palm oil production in Colombia was likely to provoke mass forced evictions, land grabs, pollution of waterways and the destruction of forests. Despite this acknowledgement, War on Want claims that Britain buys 48.5 per cent of Colombia’s palm oil exports, and continues to provide military assistance to Colombia, refusing to specify the value of this assistance, despite fears that it could be helping fund these human rights abuses.

Gemma Houldey, War on Want's international programmes officer for conflict zones, said: ‘The Colombian government and the paramilitaries are profiting from the scramble for biofuels while people who stand in their way are murdered and dispossessed. Some products bought in Britain could well contain ingredients which results from this brutality. The UK government must stop military aid to a Colombian government whose palm oil comes soaked in the blood and misery of so many poor people.’