The civil conflict in Colombia took the lives of more than a quarter of a million people–the vast majority of whom were civilians. Official statistics show that nearly half a million people across the country were impacted directly by physical violence, including sexual- and gender-based attacks, kidnappings, extrajudicial killings, and forced disappearances. Millions more were forcibly displaced from their homes and had their land seized illegally. Armed actors and those who financed them are responsible for terrorizing the population for more than five decades, during which they used violence and intimidation to consolidate their power and advance their interests.
Much of this is widely recognized. What has been less visible is the role that certain multinational companies may have played in financing and coordinating the activities of Colombian paramilitary groups. In fact, to use a Colombian legal concept, evidence suggests that such companies were among the actors “most responsible” for abuses committed against civilians. Now that Colombia is in a period of reckoning with the past–and has the most robust transitional justice framework in the world–it is high time for a full airing of the evidence of corporate complicity in human rights abuses that occurred during the armed conflict.
Corporate Accountability Lab recently submitted the first half of a report about the role of multinational companies in the armed conflict to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP, for its acronym in Spanish). The report serves to support the transitional justice tribunal’s investigations into crimes committed in regions including Cesar and Magdalena Medio through associations between state agents, paramilitaries, and “terceros” (“third party civilians” or “non combatants”). The last of these categories is very broad and can include corporations.
This post presents a brief introduction to the JEP and its areas of focus as well as a summary of the evidence included in CAL’s report–including evidence supporting allegations against the Prodeco Group, Drummond Company, Inc., and Drummond Ltd. for financing illegal armed groups and complicity in atrocities committed against civilians. Finally, this post highlights the need to include corporate actors in transitional justice processes.
The role of all actors–not just combatants–must be reckoned with to achieve justice and sustainable peace in Colombia and beyond.
About the JEP & its priority areas of investigation
The JEP is a transitional justice court established by the 2016 peace accords between the Colombian government and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia–People’s Army (“FARC-EP,” for its Spanish acronym) and part of the country’s Comprehensive System for Truth, Justice, Reparation and Non-Repetition. The JEP investigates violence committed during the armed conflict and administers judicial decisions through a criminal justice framework.
The JEP focuses on what are considered to be the worst and most emblematic crimes committed during the conflict. The tribunal has mandatory jurisdiction over members of the Colombian armed forces and former FARC combatants. Nonmilitary state actors and “terceros” are only subject to the JEP’s jurisdiction if they voluntarily submit to it, a loophole that has proved useful for corporate impunity.
The JEP has seven ongoing “macro cases” related to some of the worst abuses committed during the conflict. These cases explore mass violence in the form of hostage-taking, forced disappearances, the recruitment of children into armed groups, and atrocities specific to particular regions of the country. The JEP recently announced that it would consider opening three new “macro cases,” including one on “crimes committed by members of the armed forces, other state agents or in association with paramilitary groups and ‘terceros’” in several regions, including the departments of Magdalena and Cesar, where mass violence during the conflict was widespread.
Because it explicitly names “terceros,” in investigating this macro case, the JEP may consider the role of economic actors like multinational companies in crimes including sexual and gender based violence, assassinations, massacres, forced disappearances, torture, forced displacement, and land grabbing in the regions of focus. However, corporate participation in subsequent proceedings would still require voluntary submission to the JEP’s jurisdiction.
It is in the context of this macro case that CAL submitted its report on evidence of the role of multinational corporations in the armed conflict, with a focus on Drummond Company, Inc., Drummond Ltd., and the Prodeco Group’s alleged financing of paramilitaries.
Alleged complicity of multinational companies in the Colombian armed conflict
CAL’s report, which was submitted to the JEP Chamber for the Acknowledgement of Truth, Responsibility and Determination of Facts and Conduct, focuses on the alleged role of two mining companies, the Prodeco Group and Drummond Company, Inc. (together with its subsidiary Drummond Ltd.), in the Colombian armed conflict.
The Prodeco Group is a conglomerate owned by the multi-billion-dollar Anglo-Swiss extractives company Glencore International. The Group is one of the top three producers and exporters of Colombian coal. After decades of success in Colombia, the Prodeco group relinquished its mining contracts in 2021 and has begun to terminate its Colombian operations.
Drummond Company, Inc. is a privately held multi-billion-dollar US company that touches a wide range of industries but is first and foremost a coal giant. The company operates at least three subsidiaries in Colombia. The most relevant of these subsidiaries for allegations related to the armed conflict is Drummond Ltd. Drummond Ltd. owns and operates mines in the Gran Magdalena region and has been the largest exporter of Colombian coal for the last six years.
CAL’s report to the JEP highlights the alleged complicity of these companies in crimes committed in the Gran Magdalena region between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s. We provide evidence suggesting that Drummond Company Inc., Drummond Ltd., and the Prodeco Group financially supported and coordinated with illegal armed groups including the Juan Andés Álvarez Front of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC).
CAL’s report includes information about alleged complicity of these companies in the strategic financing of the AUC through intermediaries, and the related assassination of union leaders and members, assassination of people deemed guerilla collaborators (purported AUC enemies), forced displacement, and land dispossession for financial gain.
The AUC financing allegations are significant because at the time and place in question the paramilitary group–which was deemed a terrorist organization by the US government–was disproportionately responsible for hundreds of civilian deaths and displacements in the tens of thousands. The AUC terrorized civilians through acts including “social cleansing” massacres where entire communities of marginalized people believed to be guerilla sympathizers were targeted for elimination.
CAL’s report relies on sworn testimony presented to federal courts in the United States in five cases that have been filed against Drummond Company, Inc., Drummond Ltd., certain executives of these companies, and associated companies, in addition to information gathered from documentation shared by affected communities, accompanying organizations, and human rights litigators around the world seeking justice for victims of corporate abuse during the Colombian armed conflict.
In the coming weeks, CAL will submit a follow-up report to the JEP that will focus on alleged abuses in the banana sector, including by the US-based multinational Chiquita.
Importance of addressing the role of corporations in conflict settings
The role of companies in the Colombian armed conflict–and all civil conflict wherever it arises–must be addressed in order to gain a more complete understanding of what drives and directs such conflict and the atrocities committed against civilians in conflict settings. Accountability is important for acknowledging the human impact of business practices that capitalize on instability and pursue profit at all costs. Failing to acknowledge the role of companies in facilitating violence and human rights abuse in conflict settings can leave affected communities without redress, maintain abusive power structures, and undermine sustainable peace. If root causes of violence aren’t addressed, it’s foreseeable that conflict will reemerge.
Understanding the role of corporations in conflict settings and holding them accountable when justice requires is especially important in the extractives sector, where impacts on human rights are compounded by harm to the environment and contributions to climate change, which in turn affect the human rights of current and future generations. As the Prodeco Group exits Colombia, and the international community seeks a just transition away from fossil fuels, it is paramount to acknowledge and address the complex histories of extractive industries, especially where those histories intersect with the horrors of violent civil conflict.
This post is also available in Spanish.
