School of Social & Political Sciences

The exhibition looks at how the Indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoples of Choco Colombia used a legal case to protect Mother-Earth. They won a ground-breaking case before the Colombian Constitutional Court which gave rights to the River Atrato. In a landmark ruling, the Colombian Constitutional Court adopted an unprecedented ecocentric approach to human rights: the judges recognised Colombia’s Atrato River as a legal entity with environmental rights that need to be protected alongside the communities’ bio-cultural rights. The Court acknowledged the inherent interdependency between the environment and communities in the Atrato region.

 

Find out what the Guardians of the Atrato River are doing to ensure that this decision is implemented, the challenges that they face and the successes they have achieved. Explore what role the international organisations (ABColombia, SCIAF, CAFOD, Christian Aid and Oxfam) and collaboration with UK Universities – Glasgow, Nottingham and Portsmouth as part of the Colombia River Stories project – have played in supporting the communities in this process.