Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro said Saturday that his government “will suspend coal exports to Israel until the genocide is stopped.”
The trade ministry published a presidential draft decree “whereby a ban on coal exports to Israel is established.”
Draft decrees are published before taking force to allow citizens to file objections and challenge their legality.
According to the decree, the government seeks to follow up on an order by the International Court of Justice to prevent genocide in the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory that has been illegally occupied by Israel since 1976.
Israeli armed forces have killed more than 36,000 people in the Gaza Strip in response to an attack on Israeli settlements by Palestinian armed groups that killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel.
According to the decree, “the Republic of Colombia considers that the military operations against the Palestinian people represent a violation of a peremptory norm of international law, which in turn is part of the Colombian constitutional block.”
The decree also specified that mining companies that operate in Colombia exported $375 million worth of coal to Israel between January and August of 2023.
Much of this coal “is used as an energy supply and strategic resource for the manufacturing of weapons, the mobilization of troops, and the manufacturing of supplies for military operations,” said the Trade Ministry.
The decree said that the government is allowed to ban exports if they are a threat to “human dignity, democracy and compliance with human rights.”
The ban also seeks to comply with the government’s obligation at the United Nations to adopt measures that promote peace and international security, according to the Trade Ministry.
If enforced, the foreign corporations that own coal mines in Colombia, like Drummond and Glencore, won’t be legally allowed to export coal to Israel.
The proposed ban comes weeks after Petro broke off diplomatic relations with Israel in response to its alleged genocide in Gaza.