La Loma, June 15, 2017
León Valencia, Director of the Peace & Reconciliation Foundation, and Alexander Riaño, Coordinator of Research on Development-Related Conflicts for the same non-profit non-governmental organization, created in 2013, visited Drummond’s operations in Colombia after expressing their interest in visiting through a conversation with company officials at a forum that was held in Valledupar, where the invitation was extended.
The foundation’s representatives got a close-up view of the main areas of the Mining and Port operations – including the direct loading system, coal extraction, treatment and transportation processes, the environmental management plans and the company’s actions regarding Social Responsibility.
The Peace & Reconciliation Foundation was created with the goal of generating knowledge and expert analysis on issues related to security, internal armed conflict, post-conflict, criminality, governance, human rights and analysis of development-related conflicts, which make up its lines of research. All of this seeks to influence decision makers in public and private institutions and to generate changes that help to build national peace and reconciliation through its research, publications and social dialogue in the territories.
Arteaga, Claudia Rivas and Pablo Urrutia at the Pribbenow Mine.
León Valencia yLeón Valencia and Alexander Riaño have extensive experience in armed conflict issues in Colombia. Valencia is a Political Analyst and currently works as a columnist for Semana magazine, and he has also written for Diners and Credencial magazines, and for the El Tiempo and El Colombiano newspapers. Riaño is an Economist with a degree from the Universidad de los Andes and a Politologist with a degree from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, with experience in social conflicts, Human Rights and Development, and other topics.
Together, they have produced several research projects and publications for the Foundation, including “Investing in the Future – Guide to Building Peace from the Business Sector in Colombia,” which seeks, as its name indicates, to guide the country’s business owners to take actions that help them to overcome the country’s armed conflict; additionally, for the mining sector in specific, they recently published “Mining in Post-Conflict – A Matter of Carats,” focused mainly on the subject of gold, but they also address mining in general.
Also, in our area of influence, the Peace & Reconciliation Foundation has played an important role through its presence at the roundtable discussions that have been held in the Department of Cesar to carry out joint development projects, in which the UNDP and the Departmental Government have also played a leading role.
at Puerto Drummond.
The visit was led and accompanied by several company officials, including the Vice President of Communications and Public Relations, Pablo Urrutia, the Environmental Manager, Amílcar Valencia, the Community Relations Manager, Alfredo Araújo, the Social Responsibility Manager, Juan Pablo Arteaga, and the Administrative Managers of the Mining Operations, Claudia Rivas, and the Port Operations, Enrique Alvarez.
The visitors expressed their appreciation for the company’s invitation and their satisfaction with the information they received, which expanded their knowledge about how an open-sky coal mine operates, allowing them to approach their research and writing from an accurate perspective. The company’s executives were also pleased with the Foundation’s visit and the opportunity to show the company’s processes and operations, extending the invitation for them to return whenever they wish.
