The+Republic+of+Colombia's+Position+Paper+(1st+draft)

Committee: International Labour Organization Topic: Animal Trafficking Country: The Republic of Colombia

The animal trafficking is the ilegal way for work with the animals. Many people in the world take the animals from his natural enviroment to kill them and use their hair as clothes or to sell the animals to other people, especially the exotic animals, the demand for them are so high that they have taken them up to the point of extinction. Many of the animals that be transported to other habitats die a little time after they had change their place of live. The people that trafficking with animals doesn´t think that this affect to the ecology and to a enormous food chain. This problems is not only occurs in some non-civilized countries, this problems appear in all the countries, in spite of the fact that is prohibited always there is someone who trafficking with the animals. Colombia is in opposittion with the animal trafficking but nionetheless there are people who continues doing it.

We need solution to solve this problem, for example, some European authorities have intercepted some shipments with animals that come from Colombia, this animals were brought again to Colombia after being seized by Belgian customs. The animals that be confiscated was taken in a centre near Bogota by the London-Based World Society for Protection of Animals, there the animals be rehabilitated to return to the wild. All the animals that are recuperated from the criminals are transported to many centres that stay in many parts of Colombia, the propose is to rehabilitated the animals in that centres and then put it them in theirs own place for continues theirs lives.This centres are called ex situ that are like a zoo that are interested in received animals. They need to do some requirements, they need the certificate of legal existence, permission of the autonomus regional corporation of his jurisdiction and a letter of permission directed to the secretary distrital of enviroment and the motive of his request. During this period the especies are ubicated in the center of receipt of the wild fauna of the secretary of enviroment located in Engativá, inside of this place the people that are entrusted to this shelter, feed and rehabilitate the animals.

Colombia is one of the principal headquarters of the ilegal trafficking with animals in the world. The majority of the species that have major demand are usually prohibited so the ilegal animal trafficking has increased. Almost 234 tipes of birds, 76 especies of mammals, 27 especies of reptiles and 9 species of amphibians are traffiqued. The distrital entities of the capital that are involved in the application of the procedure related to the protection, the prevention of the mistreatment, the conservation and the attention to the animals in the city met with the civil organizations and the particular citizens who try to avoid more problems for the enviroment, they doing 3 tables, in each one appear one topic about the animal trafficking. The first topic was about dogs and cats, the second topic was about vehicles of animal traction and the third topic was about the ilegal animal trafficking, each group exhibithed each ideas. The Direction of Protection and Special Services across the Area of Enviroment and Ecological Protection created a campaign that says: Do not buy wild species, leave them to live in his habitats. To preserve the ecosystems Colombia coordinates with the units of intelligence, with the enviromental autoritys and with the district attorney's office the execution of the campaign, them Colombia coordinates with the mass media of spoken and written press, spreading and inviting to the massive participation of the community. People from the enviromental protection and ecological from the departments form the Choco and from the Caquetá that are the issuer from the national police state from the city of Florencia and a comunitary issuer from Quibdó appear talking in the radio about the important of this campaign and to the colaborate from the people. The groups of ecological and enviromental protection were doing activities of spreading in the comunication media for prevent actions to the animal mistreatment. Many ecological groups of young people colaborate with the groups of enviromental and ecological protection like Amigos de la Naturaleza, a group of young people that participated freely with this campaign. The organizations of enviromental an ecological protection with the help of auxiliaries graduates and enviromental authorities controled all the transports and the principal routes of ilegal traffic of animals.

Colombia was united with the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) by the law 17 from the 22th of January in 1981, so Colombia took up office the implementation of measures of effective control on the ilegal traffic of wild fauna. In spite of this agreement the ilegal traffic continues. Colombia participated in some meetings with other countries and with organizations like CITES, WWF/Adena and TRAFFICK. In that meetings each organization or country exposes its ideas for end the animal trafficking in the world. WWF/Amena work hard helping to catch the criminals.

As statistics from the average enviromental police the decrease of the animal trafficking in Colombia is about 30%. The animals that has more demand are the turtles, snakes, parrots and dairy monkeys.

The conclusion is that the animal trafficking is one of the bigest problems that affect in the ecosystems, to solve this problems we need to colaborate and not kill animals to sell their hair or sell them to another people only for money.