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The case of Sarayaku land - By Feven

 The Sarayaku (Kichwa for “river of corn”) are an Indigenous Peoples who live in several villages along a stretch of the Bobonaza River in the province of Pastaza in the southern part of the Ecuadorean Amazon. On 6 August 1996, the Ministry of Energy and Mines in Ecuador signed exploitative contract regarding Sarayaku land with Argentinean General Fuel Company called Compañía General de Combustibles (CGC) without consultation of Kichwa natives of Sarayaku. In 1997, CGC to conduct early-stage assessment of the area. 

A group called Organization of Indigenous People of Pastaza Province (OPIP) comprised of mostly Kichwa natives, protested and conducted three rallies against the operation of CGC in Sarayaku land. In 1999, after pretending to withdraw from exploiting Block 23 to ease tensions, the CGC continued their exploration. It installed military and private security guards, opened roads and cut down the forest, destroying trees and plants. As part of their drilling operations, the company also buried 1,400 kilos of pentolite explosives in Sarayaku territory - putting the lives of the Sarayaku people at risk and forcing them off some of their ancestral lands.

In 2012, Amnesty International aided the Sarayaku people in taking the Ecuadorian state to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for authorizing CGC to drill oil and install explosives on their ancestral land without their free, prior and informed consent, and for failing to repair the damage done and to protect them from future abuses. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled against the State of Ecuador for violating the right to physical integrity and seriously endangering the right to life of members of the Sarayaku community.

Yet, some eight years on the authorities have not complied with the court ruling and the explosives remain buried on Sarayaku territory.

On 13 November 2019, the people of Sarayaku presented a complaint before Ecuador’s Constitutional Court to demand that authorities comply with the 2012 ruling of the Inter-American Court. On 19 June 2020, Ecuador’s Constitutional Court admitted the complaint, but a ruling might take years.



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