A Colombian NGO has accused Colombian courts of ignoring international covenants and caving in to pressure from President Alvaro Uribe to protect Colombia’s U.S.-backed coca eradication and counter-insurgency initiatives. The charge came in the wake of a court ruling against a coalition representing over three hundred indigenous communities of the Colombian Amazon in their case to end the aerial spraying of the herbicide glyphosate. The Jose Alvear Restrepo Lawyers' Cooperative released a statement arguing that the ruling ignored the environmental policies promoted in the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, in which Colombia participated and the recommendations of which it continues to endorse. The indigenous communities argued that aerial spraying, as part of the U.S.-financed Plan Colombia, violated their basic rights to a healthy life and to continue their livelihoods in a healthy environment.
