Colombian President Gustavo Petro speaks at a high-level dialogue on climate financing held under the auspices of the UN, September 22, 2025. Photo: X/@infopresidencia.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro questioned the US “decertification” of his country and accused the United Nations of being an “accomplice” in a failed global anti-drug policy.
“I am a president decertified by a foreign government. By what right, under international law, can the president of a foreign government decertify another president who was elected by his own people? Is that democracy or the beginning of barbarism?” Petro questioned during a high-level dialogue in New York on climate financing, held as part of the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, on Monday, September 22.
Colombian president: Trump’s boat strikes won’t stop narco traffickers
In an interview with The Washington Post, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro argued the Trump administration’s boat strikes are “only for television” and amount to “murder.”https://t.co/Mn4juDxmkj
— HeterodoxThis (@HeterodoxThis) September 23, 2025
Last week, US President Donald Trump decided to “decertify” Colombia, removing the country from the list of countries deemed to be complying with the fight against drug trafficking in 2024.
Petro criticized the UN for defining whether a drug is “poisonous” depending on where it is produced. To illustrate, he noted that alcohol is not considered by the United Nations to be as dangerous a substance as cannabis because alcohol is largely produced in the North, not in the South.
Repudiation of US military actions in the Caribbean
The Colombian president also repudiated the recent US military attacks in international waters near Venezuela, supposedly carried out against vessels allegedly carrying drugs.
He said the Global South is the victim of a drug control approach that leads to “the murder of young people, who are not to blame, with missiles sent by a president of the United States.”
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Petro stressed that the “War on Drugs” is a “misguided policy” and an “outright failure” because “it was never a war against drug traffickers, but “a dominant global power policy of the North against the South.”
He argued that this failed policy blames substances or objects instead of targeting those who profit from the drug business and live in “New York, Miami, or Dubai.”
“The missiles do not go there. The missiles target the poor,” he highlighted. “This is the same global power that prevents solving the climate crisis and therefore makes it impossible for humanity to survive. It is the same global power that drops bombs on Gaza… to continue dominating the world.”
According to the Colombian president, the fight against drug trafficking and anti-immigrant policies are part of a “war between greed and life,” in which the United States and Europe believe that “a superior race exists, and that is why Colombians are treated as if they were slaves.”
“What they are doing in Gaza is an experiment just like Hitler’s, when he began testing gas chambers and concentration camps,” Petro said. He reiterated the need to end the genocide in Gaza and called for the creation of a UN protection force for the besieged and invaded enclave.
