Colombia to resume aerial fumigation of coca, says Duque. With glyphosate, defence minister adds

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Colombia to resume aerial fumigation of coca, says Duque. With glyphosate, defence minister adds

21 June 2019

Colombia’s President Ivan Duque has said security forces will resume the aerial fumigation of coca “within weeks”, with the defense minister adding that the banned substance glyphosate will probably be used.

Whether the plans announced by the president and Defense Minister Guillermo Botero are legal is disputable; the Constitutional Court suspended the practice of aerial fumigation using glyphosate until the government could convince the court otherwise.

So far, this has not happened, but Duque is under pressure from the US, whose President Donald Trump has threatened to decertify Colombia as a cooperative country in the US war on drugs.

Both the US government and the Duque administration have been reluctant to execute a crop substitution and rural development program that was agreed as part of a peace process with some 100,000 coca farmers and is widely considered more effective.

The president told the Guardian that he was considering tougher measures against coca cultivation, not to please any other countries, but it was his country’s “moral responsibility to act.”

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