Gloria Buitrago served as oversight officer for her village board. Armed men in two vehicles stopped and shot her in El Plateado, in the municipality of Argelia in the mountains of Cauca. According to Indepaz, the Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz, a private research group in Bogotá, she is Colombia’s 117th social leader killed this year.
Buitrago served as fiscal of a Junta de Acción Comunal, an elected neighbourhood board that runs local projects and represents villages to the state. She also led the local committee of bar owners. El Diario reported the attack. No group has claimed responsibility, and authorities haven’t identified who carried it out.
A Count That Keeps Climbing
Indepaz publishes a list with each victim’s name, date and place. The state’s own count is close behind. The Defensoría del Pueblo, Colombia’s human rights ombudsman, counted 112 social leaders killed from 1 January to 31 August 2026. Of those, 91 were men and 21 were women, El Diario reported on 27 September. August was the deadliest month, with 22 cases.
The longer record is bleaker. Since January 2016, the year Colombia signed its peace deal with the FARC guerrilla, the ombudsman has recorded 1,777 such killings. That’s across 10 years. It also counted 10 former FARC fighters who signed the deal and were killed by August. Indepaz keeps a separate list of ex-fighters killed after laying down arms.
The 2026 count is lower than the 2025 total, but not by much. Indepaz recorded 187 social leader killings in 2025, with more than 150 by the end of September that year. The figure for 2024 was 173. At the pace described in the report, a social leader dies roughly every two to three days.
The ombudsman also counted 86 massacres with 326 victims in the first eight months of 2026. Colombia defines a massacre as three or more people killed together.
Cauca at the Center
Cauca, on the Pacific side of the Andes, had the largest number of cases in both counts. El Diario put the department’s 2026 total at 26, including six in September. Indepaz’s list names James Flor and María Ovidia Palechor, an Indigenous leader, killed in Cajibío on 1 September. It also names Jacob Guacheta Zambrano, another Indigenous leader, killed in Morales on 10 September, and Manuel España, a community board member, killed in Argelia on 29 August.
The region lies on routes used for cocaine, weapons and illegal gold. Armed groups fight over those routes and pressure community groups.
Leonardo González, director of Indepaz, named three armed forces operating around El Plateado. They are the Carlos Patiño structure, a faction of former FARC guerrillas who rejected the 2016 peace deal; the Diomer Cortés front of the Segunda Marquetalia, another group of former FARC fighters; and the ELN, described as Colombia’s largest remaining left-wing guerrilla. González told El Diario that the groups “maintain disputes for territorial control and exert pressure on community organisations”.
Who Pays the Price
Most of these killings happen in rural areas far from Bogotá, Medellín and the tourist coast. Many victims worked on land claims, environmental issues or community boards. The ombudsman issues early warnings for specific risk areas, including parts of Cauca, while Indepaz updates its list as it confirms cases. El Diario reported the 117 figure on 30 September.
Why This Matters: The people being killed connect remote villages to the state. They run local projects, press land claims and speak up on environmental issues. When they die, communities lose those links. The loss falls hardest on rural areas already far from Bogotá and Medellín. The ombudsman’s early warnings show officials can identify risk areas like Cauca, yet killings continue there anyway. Ten years after the FARC peace deal, 1,777 social leaders have been killed, and former fighters who laid down arms are among the dead. Rights groups and public institutions will keep pressing the question of how the state protects people whose work is to represent their neighbours. Most of the killers in this report remain unidentified.