Indigenous community in Colombia gets its day in court over ‘ancestral land’

The U’wa people inhabit the foothills and cloud forests of the Colombian Andes. Photograph: Damian Carrington/The Guardian

After centuries fighting to protect their territory – and 26 years waiting to testify in an international legal dispute – an Andean Indigenous community has finally made its formal declarations against the Colombian state.

The U’wa Indigenous community told the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) that Colombia has repeatedly failed to recognise their ancestral lands and has threatened the group’s existence by polluting their territory with oil.