Ms Rosa María Mateus Parra:

"And now a black blight torments a people, a blight that does not explode like bombs or crack like gunfire. Other men from other worlds want hunger and death to come in, a hunger that kills silently, that can kill the silent.” I will tell the committee about a people who is not silent, despite those who would wish to silence them. My gratitude to those who can listen to us with their conscience because we will discuss death, a people's risk of extermination, and who is responsible and can be made accountable.

Over more than 20 years of work, our organisation has managed to corroborate several things vis-á-visthe complaints of indigenous, Afro-descendant and small-scale farming communities of La Guajira in Colombia.

First, the coal exported from our country is coal brimming with death and destruction. The extracted coal that reaches Ireland has meant the constant violation of human and environmental rights, as has been stated in the Colombian court sentences about the ineffective and disingenuous compliance of companies.

Second, the affected communities have identified and face abuses of power and enormous asymmetry in relations between states, the company and communities. Third, the communities are in a struggle to defend life, water, and territory from the violations of their right to a healthy environment and ecological balance, to be against pollution and the mine's high water consumption in a semi-arid region, diseases, ignorance of the climate crisis, and the need to act urgently in the face of violations of labour rights.

The information presented to these offices exist within the context of a dispute over the truth between one of the parties, and the communities which only have only their voices, their feelings and their lived reality, and some judicial sentences that have not been fulfilled and fall short of accountability for senior decision-makers. Plus, there is the company, which counts on communicative power, corporate capture, wealth and countries that, finding it difficult to review their conscience and dream of a different world, believe that we can continue to live as we have until now.

We once said the following to the shareholders of these companies. We said that it may be that the world is condemned to suffer the invisible dictatorship of finances and profit, and that no one in the auditorium really cares that the money they receive cost the life of a Wayuu child, that it did not matter because it was not their children who would not be able to sleep at night due to a coughing fit, and that it was of no importance because it was not they who, as mothers and fathers, would have to weep for their children dying of hunger and thirst. In La Guajira more than 5,000 children have died in the last decade.

It may be that the world is condemned to live under the spell of the words of those who lie, cheat and take advantage of people's vulnerability. Perhaps people have settled for varnished stories about the social responsibility they claim to apply and chained themselves to their lies. However, there is only one reality for them, for members and for the whole world - the climate crisis. One day the companies will no longer be able to pass off their encouraging statistics because the world will simply no longer tolerate their lies. The climate crisis is something that we will all experience. No one will be able to flee from it and profits will not keep us warm or feed us.

It is urgent that those who have an opportunity to help stop so much death should do so. It is urgent that those who hold office and represent consumer states help to prevent this from continuing, and from becoming accomplices to the destruction and suffering perpetrated by others. It is necessary to monitor the companies denounced by communities, even companies that have declared themselves responsible. It is necessary to exact justice so that these companies do not remain in impunity.

The need for alternatives and a transition is a reality. The response to a change in the traditional energy matrix is a reality. All that is necessary is to listen to those who have answers rather than those who have lied, those who see in others the faces of fools whom they can subject to a model that day by day becomes an ever greater failure for humanity.