A coalition of activists, land defenders, maritime communities, and allied organisations on Monday 27, 2026, disrupted operations at the Drummond coal port in Santa Marta – the largest coal export terminal in Colombia. The direct action demanded an energy embargo on fossil fuel flows that materially sustain genocide, war crimes, and colonial occupation, and called for an international transition framework rooted in justice and accountability.
The action was carried out by Global Sumud Flotilla, Climate Justice Flotilla, Debt For Climate, 350, ANGRY, United For Climate Justice, GARN, Resiste Glencore, and regional frontline communities and workers. It took place alongside the First International Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, which convenes in Santa Marta this week, where delegates from more than 50 countries are preparing for the high-level segment from April 28 to 29.
A Global Reality: Fossil Fuels Sustain War and Apartheid
The Santa Marta Conference convenes in a world where fossil fuels are not only an emissions problem: they are the material infrastructure of war. From Venezuela to Cuba, from Palestine to Iran, the US-Israeli alliance and its partners continue to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and ecocide in pursuit of fossil fuel control – actively blocking energy supplies to those who refuse to comply with its designs.
Any transition framework that cannot name this reality will fail the people who need it most.
Currently, climate governance regulates emissions, not complicity. It does not control the production, trade, insurance, refining, and supply chains that enable fossil fuels to flow into war and occupation. Trade and investment regimes shield fossil capital, and no existing climate mechanism enforces states’ obligations under international law to prevent their exports from enabling mass atrocities.
Colombia Has Already Shown What Is Possible
Colombia’s move to halt coal exports to Israel has established an indispensable precedent: fossil fuel trade is not neutral, and states can act to prevent their energy exports from materially sustaining mass violence.
But a precedent without enforcement is a gesture. As the case in Türkiye shows – where a declared embargo has not halted crude oil flows through its territory – the gap between political will and enforcement is where the fossil fuel industry operates freely. Building the architecture that closes that gap, including supply-chain transparency, anti-circumvention measures, binding conditionality, is the work this conference must begin.
We recognise Colombia’s courage and its leadership. We call on Global North countries to match it: assume your historical responsibilities, accelerate your own phase-out commitments, and pay for the transition you have deferred for decades.
Message
There is no credible global climate action without without confronting the fossil fuel supply chains that enable genocide and ecocide. There is no climate transition without global justice.
From every river to every sea, the profit chains fueling mass violence must be disrupted, exposed, and phased out. The Santa Marta Conference offers a decisive opening to shift from rhetoric to just enforcement.
Demands
- Make energy embargo a central political question of this conference. States must cease fossil fuel transfers that materially sustain genocide, war crimes, illegal occupation, or other grave violations of international humanitarian law. They must build the enforcement architecture that makes embargoes real: a global supply-chain transparency instrument with public shipment tracking, end-destination disclosure, and anti-circumvention measures covering ship-to-ship transfers, AIS manipulation, intermediary refining, and opaque trader structures.
2. Protect workers, communities, and Indigenous peoples as frontline actors in just transition enforcement. Workers who refuse to load, refine, transport, or insure fossil fuel cargoes linked to atrocity crimes must be shielded from dismissal, prosecution, and retaliation. Whistleblower protections, union rights, and community standing must be written into any enforcement framework from the outset.
3. End the criminalisation of land, sea, and climate defenders. States must immediately cease the prosecution, surveillance, and persecution of activists, union leaders, and community organisers who resist fossil fuel extraction and trade. The defenders who make just transition possible cannot be treated as its enemies. Impunity for those who threaten, attack, or kill land defenders must end.
4. Recognise energy sovereignty as foundational to a just transition. Colonised and occupied peoples must have the right to control their own energy resources and systems. A fossil fuel treaty that does not center energy sovereignty will reproduce the hierarchies that built the fossil economy in the first place.
5. Give communities legal standing to refuse extraction and trigger accountability. Free, prior and informed consent must become enforceable. Communities must be able to halt extraction, withdraw consent, and activate binding obligations on states and corporations – with legal mechanisms that do not require decades of litigation to become real.
6. Open a pathway toward a binding Fossil Fuel Treaty. The treaty must address production, trade, supply chains, and fossil fuel complicity in atrocity crimes. It must include energy sovereignty, supply-chain transparency, worker protection, and international-law conditionality in climate and reconstruction finance. It must establish reparative finance obligations on states and corporations whose fossil fuel production and trade have materially sustained conflict, international crimes, and ecological destruction.