Buenaventura Protection Analysis Update

Buenaventura is in the Colombian Pacific. It's the biggest city on this coast and it is the largest municipality of department of Valle del Cauca. The city consists of an insular zone (Isla de Cascajal) where most economic activities and services are located. It is the center of municipality, and another continental, with a vocation mainly residential. International trade and shipping highlight the strategic location of Buenaventura.  

It is a municipality that has lived in cycles of violence closely related to the plans of port expansion. Its geostrategic location is considered as a resource sought by armed actors' irregularities in the face of drug trafficking dynamics and weapons. In addition, it has mining, logging, fishing and biodiversity that generate tensions before visions of unreconciled development. 

Even in urban or rural settings, communities in Buenaventura have experienced the disproportionate effects of the forced displacement and confinement, among other facts in the context of the conflict. Its inhabitants have warned that the violation of their territorial and collective rights generates profound damage to the community structure and the fracture of their community's life projects.

The Protection Analysis Update presents an analysis in the district of Buenaventura, related to increased risks to communities from conflict, multiple forms of violence, confinement or gender-based violence, and among other human rights violations. It also presents a series of operational recommendations and strategies in search of strengthening the capacities of the competent authorities and the communities themselves to move towards favorable environments of protection. 

Priority protection risks identified include: 

• Homicides, violence and threats to social and cultural fractures  

• Forced Displacements  

• Gender-Based Violence  

• Recruitment, Use, and utilization of Boys, Girls, and Adolescents