The Government and Embera indigenous people of Risaralda signed agreements yesterday in Bogotá in which the Executive committed to improving access to health, education, housing and productive lands, so that 4,000 of them will return to their places of origin.
This was reported by the director of the National Land Agency (ANT), Felipe Harman, and the Senior Advisor of the Greater Indigenous Council of Risaralda, Marco Fidel Guasarave, who were in charge of the negotiations that allowed the protests that lasted four days in Bogota.
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“There is a robust agenda of more than 10 concrete proposals from indigenous authorities that will be developed” in the next two years, Harman explained. The official highlighted that the dialogues to reach agreements lasted four days without any disorders in the occupied places.
Last Tuesday, when the indigenous people arrived in Bogotá in 60 buses, they set up tents in front of the National Land Agency building and said they would be there “as long as necessary.” In addition to demanding that Gustavo Petro’s government fulfill the support it promised them in areas such as health, education and housing, they also denounced that in the last two years at least 110 indigenous children under five years of age have died due to malnutrition.
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Attention Embera communities in Bogotá.
Courtesy – API
In the agreements signed this Friday, the Government committed to offering security to the indigenous people when they return to their areas, strengthening the Land Access Program, with detailed commitments for 2024, 2025 and 2026, and the expansion of the Kurmadó Indigenous Reservation of Marseille , in the department of Caldas.
In addition, the Government said that it guarantees access to basic services such as health and education, and the strengthening of productive projects in the areas where indigenous people live to promote their autonomy. In August, more than 800 Embera indigenous people returned to their territories from Bogotá after almost a year living under plastic tents and precarious conditions in the central National Park to demand guarantees of peace in their lands, from which they left due to the armed conflict and the violence.
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