"The oil companies are operating in the Amazon anyway, and we can help make sure they abide by human rights standards." Such was the rationale presented by the head of the United Nations Development Programme in Colombia.

The week prior, UNDP Colombia had announced a new private sector partnership to implement a program to kick-start local economies in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Who was their corporate partner? None other than the Chile-based oil company GeoPark, which had been run out of the northern Peruvian Amazon by Achuar and Wampis communities.

Somehow UNDP missed that local community groups had publicly accused GeoPark of environmental devastation and support for illegal paramilitary groups that were threatening the grassroots Amazon defenders. So much for "due diligence" by the UNDP.