wiego report on the policy environment of informal urban waste pickers and artisanal mine workers

247 Pages·2011·3.58 MB·English

WIEGO REPORT ON THE POLICY ENVIRONMENT OF INFORMAL
URBAN WASTE PICKERS AND ARTISANAL MINE WORKERS IN
COLOMBIA

Adriana Ruiz-Restrepo
Shailly Barnes

October 2010
THIS WIEGO REPORT WAS PREPARED BY:

rra
(Public Law + Social Innovation)

attorneys & consultants

Ms. Adriana Ruiz-Restrepo ( Team Coordination & Lead Researcher)

Ms. Shailly Barnes ( Senior Researcher )

Mr. Sebastian Torres ( Research Assistant )

Mr. Camilo Barrera ( Research Assistant )

The authors would like to express their gratitude to those who, in

the field, through their life stories or through their practitioner

knowledge and information in Cali, Bogota and New York made this

report possible.

Our gratitude extends to colleagues in New Delhi, Pune,

Ahmedebad, Patna, Bangalore, Cairo, Buenos Aires, and Belo

Horizonte who have allowed us to further our comparative

understanding of law, policy and poverty in the global south. Our

sincere gratitude to Ms. Marty Chen, Ms. Chris Bonner and the

WIEGO network, for their trust and support, but especially for their

important contribution to development and justice through

research and advocacy efforts aimed at building a better global

understanding of the informal working poor.

Please cite as: “RUIZ-RESTREPO Adriana, BARNES Shailly, WIEGO
Report on the Policy Environment of Informal Urban Waste Pickers

and Rural Artisanal Mine Workers In Colombia.”
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“Virtually all policies affect the informal Economy.

In the past, interested policy makers have advocated some mix of the following
policies for those who work in the informal economy: social policies to improve
their health and education; infrastructure and services to improve their housing
and living environment; microfinance and enterprise development services to
increase the productivity of their enterprises; bureaucratic and legal changes to
reduce the barriers—and related transaction costs—to registering their
enterprises; and, more recently, property rights to give them the ability to
transform their assets into liquid capital. Too few policy makers have considered
how other areas of policies—economic policies, labour legislation, and social
protection schemes—affect the informal economy.

(…) Until recently, there was a widespread assumption that mainstream economic
policies do not and cannot reach the informal economy. (…) Clearly, a reappraisal
of the impact of existing economic policies and the need for supportive economic
policies is called for. This is because economic policies impact the process of
redistribution between the formal and informal economy. Policy analysis needs to
determine whether the informal economy shares in benefits from government
expenditure and procurement policies.”

A Policy Response to the Informal Economy

WIEGO Brochure, Cambridge MA
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................. 4
ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS ......................................................................................... 7
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ........................................................................................................... 8
1. AUTHORS’ CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR THIS WIEGO REPORT ................................... 13
1.1. SURVIVING POVERTY IN THE INFORMAL ECONOMY ............................................................................................ 14
1.1.1. POVERTY AS A CONSEQUENCE OF BAD LAW AND NEGLIGENT POLICY MAKING ..................................................................... 14
1.1.2. THE INFORMAL ECONOMY REALM ........................................................................................................................................................ 17
1.1.3. OWN ACCOUNT WORKERS: AT THE CROSSROADS OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND LABOR RIGHTS .................................... 22
1.1.4. COLOMBIA, POVERTY AND THE INFORMAL ECONOMY................................................................................................................... 26
1.2. MAIN CHALLENGES FOR INCLUSIVE POLICY MAKING ........................................................................................... 30
1.2.1. WOMEN .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 30
1.2.2. CHILDREN ....................................................................................................................................................................................................... 33
1.2.3. ETHNOCULTURAL MINORITIES OF INDIGENOUS AND AFRO-DESCENDANT PEOPLES ........................................................... 35
1.2.4. THE SOCIAL PROTECTION ISSUE .............................................................................................................................................................. 37
1.2.5. DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE FOR INCLUSIVE DEVELOPMENT ...................................................................................................... 39
1.3. INTERNATIONAL AGENDAS ON THE INFORMALITY OF POVERTY-TRAPPED WORKERS ........................................... 40
1.3.1. THE DECENT WORK AGENDA ................................................................................................................................................................... 40
1.3.2. THE LEGAL EMPOWERMENT OF THE POOR AGENDA ...................................................................................................................... 42
1.3.3. THE REVISED FIRST MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOAL ................................................................................................................ 42
2. URBAN AND INFORMAL WASTE RECYCLING WORKERS IN COLOMBIA ............................. 44
2.1. CONTEXT AND HISTORY OF WASTE MANAGEMENT ............................................................................................. 47
2.1.1. HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF WASTE MANAGEMENT SERVICE AND ECONOMY IN BOGOTA .................................................... 48
2.2. PUBLIC POLICY OF WASTE MANAGEMENT .......................................................................................................... 52
2.2.1. CONSTITUTIONAL UNDERSTANDING OF WASTE MANAGEMENT ................................................................................................ 52
2.2.2. LAW 142 OF 1994......................................................................................................................................................................................... 56
2.2.3. WASTE MANAGEMENT DECREES 1713 OF 2002 AND 1505 OF 2003 .......................................................................................... 58
2.2.4. LAW IN THE FIELD OR PUBLIC POLICY IMPLEMENTATION OF WASTE MANAGEMENT DECISIONS .................................... 65
2.2.5. THE NEED TO RECONCEPTUALIZE THE NOTION OF WASTE IN THE XXI CENTURY FOR SUSTAINABLE AND INCLUSIVE
WASTE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH .......................................................................................................................... 68
2.3. INFORMAL WASTE RECYCLING WORKERS ........................................................................................................... 69
2.3.1. WASTE DUMP WASTE PICKERS AND STREET WASTE PICKERS ....................................................................................................... 70
2.3.2. WOMEN WASTE RECYCLING WORKERS ............................................................................................................................................... 71
2.3.3. CHILDREN IN WASTE RECYCLING WORK ............................................................................................................................................... 72
2.3.4. ELDERLY WASTE RECYCLING WORKERS ................................................................................................................................................ 73
2.3.5. ETHNOCULTURAL MINORITIES IN WASTE RECYCLING WORK ....................................................................................................... 74
2.3.6. SOCIAL PROTECTION .................................................................................................................................................................................. 74
2.4. TRADE CONTEXT OF WASTE PICKERS .................................................................................................................. 76
2.4.1. THE COLOMBIAN STATE. ........................................................................................................................................................................... 79
2.4.2. BUSINESS CORPORATIONS IN THE WASTE INDUSTRY ...................................................................................................................... 79
A. THE BUSINESS CONTRACT FOR THE COLLECTION AND TRANSPORT OF WASTE. .......................................................................... 79
B. THE BUSINESS CONTRACT FOR THE FINAL DISPOSAL OF WASTE ....................................................................................................... 81
2.4.3. AUTHORIZED ORGANIZATIONS UNDER LAW 142 OF 1994. ........................................................................................................... 83
WASTE PICKERS’ COOPERATIVES AND OTHER NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS AS AUTHORIZED ORGANIZATIONS ................. 83
2.4.4. WASTE RECYCLING BUSINESSES .............................................................................................................................................................. 84
(I) NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL INDUSTRIAL SECONDARY COMMODITY OR WASTE BUYERS .............................................. 84
(II) WARE HOUSES WITH LOCAL, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL TRANSACTIONS IN WASTE ................................................... 85
(III) OWN-ACCOUNT WASTE PICKERS ............................................................................................................................................................... 86
(IV) ILLEGALLY ARMED GROUPS ......................................................................................................................................................................... 86
2.5. THE LABOR AND THE MARKET OF INFORMAL WASTE RECYCLING WORKERS ......................................................... 86
2.5.1. THE LABOR OF WASTE RECYCLING WORKERS ................................................................................................................................................... 86
2.5.2 THE ENTREPRENEURIALISM OF WASTE RECYCLING WORKERS .......................................................................................................................... 88
2.5.3. THE LEGAL IMPOVERISHMENT OF THE POOR PORTRAYED BY ARTICLE 28 OF DECREE 1713 OF 2002; NOW JUDICIALLY
REDRESSED. ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 91
2.5.4. THE LEGAL IMPOVERISHMENT OF THE POOR PORTRAYED BY ARTICLES 6 AND 14 OF LAW 1259 OF 2008; NOW
JUDICIALLY REDRESSED. ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 92
2.6. WASTE PICKERS’ OWN ACCOUNT LABOR AND ENTREPRENEURIALISM ................................................................. 93
2.7. WASTE PICKERS ORGANIZATIONS FOR ECONOMIC INCLUSION AND PARTICIPATORY GOVERNANCE ..................... 95
2.7.1. NONPROFIT LEGAL PERSONS OF SOLIDARITY ECONOMY IN COLOMBIA ................................................................................... 96
2.7.2. EVOLUTION OF WASTE PICKERS ORGANIZATIONS AND LEGAL EMPOWERMENT OF COLOMBIAN WASTE PICKERS .. 99
2.7.2.1. PRE MID-EIGHTIES OR THE UNORGANIZED WASTE PICKERS PHASE: .................................................................................. 100
2.7.2.2. MID-EIGHTIES TO MID NINETIES OR THE ORGANIZATION AND CAPACITY BUILDING PHASE OF WASTE PICKERS:
.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 100
2.7.2.3. Mid-Nineties until 2003 or Partnering To Fight against the Legal Impoverishment of the Poor ............................... 101
2.7.2.4. 2008 AND FORWARD: THE EMPOWERMENT OF WASTE PICKERS AS ENTREPRENEURS IN THE COLOMBIAN
WASTE ECONOMY ................................................................................................................................................................................................ 104

ANNEX 1. THE CIVISOL CASE ON CALI’S WASTE PICKERS: FROM MARGINALIZED WASTE
PICKERS TO ENTREPRENEURS IN RECYCLING ............................................................................... 108
ANNEX 2. MAPPING OF WASTE PICKERS ORGANIZATIONS ................................................. 122
3. COLOMBIA’S RURAL MINE WORKERS IN POVERTY .......................................................... 123
3.1. PUBLIC POLICY FRAMEWORK OF MINING ......................................................................................................... 125
3.1.1. THE CONSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK ................................................................................................................................................. 125
3.1.2. THE COLOMBIAN MINING CODE OF 2001 ......................................................................................................................................... 128
3.2 THE TRADE CONTEXT ........................................................................................................................................ 132
3.3. LIVELIHOOD OF RURAL MINE WORKERS ............................................................................................................ 136
3.3.1 ETHNO-CULTURAL MINORITIES ............................................................................................................................................................ 136
3.3.2. THE INDIGENOUS MINE WORKERS HISTORY .................................................................................................................................. 137
3.3.3. THE AFRO-COLOMBIAN MINE WORKERS HISTORY ....................................................................................................................... 139
3.3.4. INDIGENOUS RESERVATIONS LAND REGIME OR RESGUARDOS ............................................................................................... 141
3.3.5. AFRO-COLOMBIANS COMMUNAL LANDS REGIME OR TERRITORIOS COMUNITARIOS .................................................. 143
3.3.6. LAND ISSUES REGARDING ETHNO-CULTURAL AUTONOMY AND COLLECTIVE PROPERTY ............................................... 147
3.3.7. WOMEN RELATED LAND ISSUES: ETHNO-CULTURAL COMMUNITIES, CUSTOMARY LAW AND COLLECTIVE
PROPERTY ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 152
3.4. WOMEN MINE WORKERS LIVING IN POVERTY ................................................................................................... 154
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3.4.1. WOMEN IN LARGE AND MEDIUM SCALE MINING OPERATIONS ............................................................................................... 155
3.4.2. WOMEN IN MEDIUM SCALE (SOLIDARITY BASED) MINING AND SMALL SCALE MINING ................................................... 157
3.4.3. WOMEN IN MICRO SCALE MINING ................................................................................................................................................... 158
3.5. CHILDREN IN MINE WORK ................................................................................................................................ 160
3.6. HEALTH AND SOCIAL PROTECTION .................................................................................................................... 163
3.7. ACCESS TO MINE WORK ................................................................................................................................... 164
3.7.1. THE ORDINARY MINING CONCESSION: ACCESSING MINERALS THROUGH A CONTRACT FOR A MINING TITLE......... 165
ON THE GOVERNMENT’S OBLIGATION TO ENSURE THE ETHNO-CULTURAL COMMUNITIES’ FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO
CONSULTATION BEFORE GRANTING ANY ORDINARY CONCESSION TO A NATIONAL OR MULTINATIONAL MINING
OPERATION ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 172
3.7.2. MINE WORK THROUGH A STATE-LED SPECIAL MINING PROJECT FOR INFORMAL WORK IN EXISTING TRADITIONAL
MINE EXPLOITATIONS ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 180
3.8 AUTHORIZATION FOR UN-TITLED OCCASIONAL MINE WORK .............................................................................. 185
3.8.1. PERSONAL HOUSE BUILDING AND INSTALLATIONS ....................................................................................................................... 185
3.8.2. BAREQUEO: RIVER SAND PANNING AND EXTRACTION OF ALLUVIAL CONSTRUCTION AGGREGATES .......................... 186
3.9. FROM OWN ACCOUNT TO SELF EMPLOYED MINE WORK: THREE ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES OF ARTISANAL AND
SMALL SCALE MINERS PLACED IN POVERTY-TRAPS BY THE LAW ............................................................................... 189
3.10 ILLEGALITY INFORMALITY AND POVERTY BUILDING BY THE RULE OF LAW ......................................................... 192
3.11. ORGANIZATION AND REPRESENTATION OF INFORMAL POVERTY TRAPPED MINE WORKERS TO INCREASE
GOVERNANCE CAPACITY FOR INCLUSION IN MAINSTREAM DEVELOPMENT ............................................................. 198
4.1.1. SOLIDARITY ECONOMY FOR ASSOCIATED MINE WORK IN MEDIUM- AND SMALL-SCALE OPERATIONS ...................... 198
4.1.2. MINERS’ SPACE FOR INCLUSIVE LAW AND POLICY MAKING ....................................................................................................... 201

ANNEX 3. A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF ARTISANAL AND SMALL-SCALE MINING (ASM) IN
INTERNATIONAL POLICY DISCOURSE AND THE AUTHORS’ POSITION AND UNDERSTANDING
OF ASM ............................................................................................................................................... 205
ANNEX 4. MAPPING OF MINE WORKERS ORGANIZATIONS ................................................. 211
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................... 212
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ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

ANR Asociación Nacional de Recicladores
ARB Asociación de Recicladores de Bogotá
ASM Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining
CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women
CiViSOL Foundation for the Civic-Solidary Building of Systemic Change
CLEP/ ”The Commission” The Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor
CONES Consejo Nacional de la Economía Solidaria
CRA Comisión de Regulación de de Agua Potable y Saneamiento Básico
CRC Convention on the Rights of the Child
CVC Corporation of the Valle de Cauca
DAGMA Departamento Administrativo de Gestión del Medio Ambiente
DANSOCIAL Departamento Administrativo de Economía Solidaria
EDIS Empresa Distrital de Servicios Públicos de Bogotá
EMSIRVA Empresa de Servicios Varios Municipales de Cali
GERT Grupo Empresarial de la Recuperación y Transformación de materiales S.A ESP
GREMIVALLE Asociacion Gremial De Mineros Del Valle
ICBF Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar
ICCPR International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
ICESCR International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
IDP Internally Displaced People
ILO International Labour Organization
INGEOMINAS Instituto Colombiano de Geología y Minería
MDG Millennium Development Goal
NGO Non-Governmental Organization
NPO Nonprofit Organization
NOVIB OXFAM NOVIB- Netherlands
PGIRS El Plan de Gestión Integral de Residuos Sólidos - PGIRS
POS Plan Obligatorio de Salud

SENA Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje
SISBEN Sistema de Identificación de Beneficiarios de Subsidios Sociales
SSPD Superintendencia de Servicios Públicos Domiciliarios
WIEGO Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing Global Policy Research Network
UNEP United Nations Environmental Programme
SSPD Superintendencia de Servicios Públicos Domiciliarios de Colombia
UAESP Unidad Administrativa Especial de Servicios Públicos de la Alcaldía Mayor de Bogotá
MBOP Membership Based Organizations of the Poor
OSEs Organization of the Solidary Economy
OSDs Organization for Solidary Development
CTA Cooperativa de Trabajo Asociado

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This document presents a research and policy analysis encompassed under WIEGO´s Global Project on
Law and the Informal Economy. Initiated in India in 2008, WIEGO’s project aims to contribute to
developing an enabling labor law environment for informal workers, one that promotes decent work
and economic opportunity, labor rights, benefits and protection, and actively encourages the growth of
strong, democratic, sustainable unions or member-based organizations of informal workers. This
document continues WIEGO’s Global project and identifies the public policy barriers facing own
account workers in two occupational groups of Colombia’s informal economy – urban waste pickers
and rural mine workers living in poverty. By making explicit the role that law and policy have played in
shaping the waste and mining sectors of the Colombian economy, this report also reveals the space
within which waste pickers and mine workers, and their organizations, may maneuver to challenge the
present regulatory environment, protect their constitutional rights to live, work and develop, as well as
the trades that they have cultivated and developed over time, and seek opportunities for growth and
progress.

The first occupational group of informal own account workers considered in this report is Colombia’s
urban recyclers, who are also known as waste pickers. This trade has emerged throughout the
developing world as a response to limited municipal resources, the inability of the formal economy to
absorb a growing urban population, and the particular market value placed on recyclable materials in
the modern globalized economy. Although engaged in the provision of recycling services and
contributing to a greener environment, the men, women and children in this trade do not work in a
well-defined trade environment within the more comprehensive economy for waste management
services.

Linked to the country’s high levels of urbanization and growing need for efficient and universal waste
services, Colombia’s waste management sector has evolved from a municipally owned-and-operated
service delivery to one that has been increasingly privatized since the 1990s. Yet, and as established by
the Colombian Constitution and relevant policy measures, namely Law 142 of 1994 and Decree 1713 of
2003, waste management remains an essential public service in Colombia for which the public
administration remains responsible to every Colombian constituent. Included within this set of
essential public services are the waste management elements of the environmental sanitation public
service, notably waste collection, transportation, final disposal, and the advantageous uses of waste, a
category that encompasses, among other things, recycling, and linked to it, the trade of the waste
pickers. The implications of this characterization of the waste pickers’ trade are significant and lie at
the heart of the waste pickers’ body of law, a series of cases in front of the Constitutional and
Administrative Courts of Colombia that have established the state’s obligation to facilitate the waste
pickers’ inclusion into the formal waste economy.

The informality of the waste pickers’ trade is rooted in their history as internally displaced people
settling on the margins of urban life by salvaging recyclables from trash heaps. Initially a women’s
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trade, as income opportunities dwindled and urban populations grew, the trade expanded to include
its current population of women and men, children, and the elderly, all of whom may be found going
from trash can to trash can collecting bottles, glass, cardboard, and other recyclable materials, or living
and working in public dumps doing the same. Over the past several years, and as the market value of
recyclable materials has increased in Colombia, the trade has grown both formally and informally, with
capital-intensive, private sector companies entering the market, alongside more traditional actors in
waste management, such as the State, private concessionaires providing waste collection, transport
and disposal services via concession contract, and other authorized organizations under relevant waste
law and policy, i.e., waste pickers’ cooperatives and other nonprofit organizations, as well as the newly
poor, indigent or displaced.

However, and even as the value chain for recyclable materials has extended beyond Colombia into
international markets, Colombia’s waste pickers remain at its tail end, depending on society’s trash to
survive from day to day. For them, access to this trash is paramount to survival. When provisions in
the public policy of waste management threatened to curtail that access, organized waste pickers and
their allies embarked on a decade-long struggle to protect it and create further opportunities for
growth in their trade. In 2003, the Asociacion de Recicladores de Bogotá (ARB) and their lawyers
brought a Constitutional challenge to the terms of reference for the public procurement of waste
management contracts in Bogotá that was open only to equity-owned corporations and excluded non-
profit, solidarity based organizations of the poor, i.e., waste pickers organizations, from competing.
The Court’s decision recognizing that their exclusion was, indeed, unjustified and constitutional, paved
the way for subsequent cases that increasingly grew the public policy space for waste pickers’ inclusion
in the formal waste economy. Later decisions have determined that the terms for future procurement
processes be reachable by waste pickers’ organizations and recognized their legitimate rights to access
the trash that is at the heart of their trade. And, in 2009, waste pickers from Cali organized to
challenge recent legislation that prohibited characteristic elements of the waste pickers’ trade, e.g.,
the transportation of waste in non-motorized vehicles, and their expulsion from a public dump without
any provisions for work or survival. In its decision T-291-2009, the Constitutional Court both affirmed
the trade identity of waste pickers within the formal waste economy and mandated their inclusion as
entrepreneurs in recycling.

As highlighted in section 2.6 (Governance: Pursuing Open Democracy and Inclusive Development
Through Organizations of a Civic-Solidaristic Nature), while confronting these numerous and complex
struggles, from displacement and marginalization to informality and unfair competition, the
organizations of the waste pickers – primarily in the form of cooperatives, foundations and
associations – have been instrumental. It is in their collective form that they bargain for better prices in
the marketplace and, within the rule of law, otherwise mitigate their highly vulnerable and precarious
status as own account workers in the informal economy. Unfortunately, time, space and resource
limitations have so far prevented the mass organization of Colombia’s entire population of waste
pickers and organizations of waste pickers in Colombia. The organizational history of waste pickers
from the mid-1970s to the present, and especially that of ARB and the Cali waste pickers who were
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engaged in the most recent Constitutional Court decision favoring waste pickers’ inclusion in the
formal waste economy, show that this process of organization is long-standing and even today in a
certain degree of flux as the policy environment relating to the third sector remains without certainty
for the poor and their organizations. Given the legal challenges that have been mounted thus far, the
disparate levels of organization among waste pickers, and the historically noted limitations of the trade
of waste picking, this report finally presents the possibility of expanding the waste pickers’ work into
waste management so as to broaden their horizon for waste pickers’ formal inclusion in democracy
and development.

The second trade group of informal own account workers explored in this report are rural mine
workers, and, more specifically, the mining activities of two ethno-cultural minorities that have a
special history vis-à-vis the mining trade in Colombian – indigenous and afro-Colombian mine workers
and their communities. These two minority groups continue to find themselves geographically,
culturally, and politically isolated from the channels of democratic governance in Colombia and deeply
entrenched in circumstances of poverty. As with waste pickers, the informality characteristic of their
mining activities is in part attributable to the law and policy environment of the broader, formal mining
sector, and emanates from the Constitution, which recognizes State as the sole owner of all subsoil and
natural non-renewable resources in the country. Thus, and as presented in this report, own account
mine workers work in a realm where the Colombian State has an explicit monetary interest that be in
tension with its responsibilities to constituents informally engaged and surviving therein.

The definitive legislation for the mining industry in Colombia is the Mining Code of 2001. While lauded
for minimizing government bureaucracy and ushering in foreign direct investment in the mining sector
of the country’s economy, the Mining Code is not without controversy. Most relevant here, the Code
has not advanced the inclusion of mine workers who live and work in poverty. The limitations on own
account mine workers in poverty range from information asymmetry due to an inability to access and
make sense of the Code’s provisions, which are themselves fraught with imprecision and a lack of
clarity, to its intent to encourage large-scale mining in Colombia. Further, the State’s role in mining has
been restricted by a recent policy reform that dismounted all public industrial mining and promotion
and left a bare minimum State involvement, i.e., protecting natural parks, ethnic groups rights to
certain lands or resources, or State security interests, while creating an enabling environment for
considerable amounts of private investment monies in the mining sector. The State’s increasingly
limited role has resulted in an expanded privatization of the mining sector, where the State’s dual
obligations as law maker and sole owner of all mineral and sub-soil resources tend to conflict with the
rights of those ethno-cultural minorities and constituents in poverty who engage in micro-scale and
artisanal mining to survive.

Micro-scale and artisanal mining have historical and cultural significance to the ethno-cultural
minorities considered in this report. The ancestors of contemporary indigenous communities had been
mining the wealth of resources found underneath Colombia’s rich ecological landscape since pre-
Colombian times, while West African slaves were brought to Colombia to support the Spanish colonial
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