[4] In environmental matters, the Government issued a series of measures that would allow studying the possibility of applying hydraulic fracturing in the country; To this end, a commission of experts on the subject was formed, which determined the need to carry out pilot tests, in order to analyze the impact of this technique in context.

All this, despite the fact that in a campaign event held in Bucaramanga, on 11 April 2018,[5] Iván Duque had stated that: "here we have an overlapping of complex and diverse ecosystems, underground aquifers of enormous wealth and risks of greater seismicity due to the type of soil, which is why I have said that fracking will not be carried out in Colombia".

[citation needed] Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Council of State suspended the rules that regulate fracking[6] Even so, the pilot tests to implement this technique in the country remained firm.

The Government clarified that these quotas have been established since at least 2010, and that finning is prohibited in the country; however, various analysts question the capacity of the State to enforce regulations on said practice.

[9][10] The magazine Semana would report on a silence operation within the army orchestrated by the high command to identify and punish the military who had denounced human rights abuses.

[13] As a result of all these scandals, Defense Minister Guillermo Botero resigned before his imminent expulsion from the cabinet that was coming with the vote of the motion of censure,[14] generating an institutional crisis.

Likewise, the Government denied that it was interested in making pension or labor reforms that went against the middle and popular classes of the country, and declared that the announcements about such intentions were false news.

In Cali, the mayor decreed a curfew, and the city was taken over by the Army's Third Brigade, due to the report of alleged bands of looters, and the sound of shots and explosions.

[22] In the morning hours, in the main cities There were several blockades in the streets and thousands of people again expressed their discontent against the government of Iván Duque, there were some clashes with the ESMAD and the public force, in turn, abuses by the authorities were denounced on social networks.

[31] The breaches by the Duque government of the agreements reached during the 2019-2020 protests in Colombia, added to the COVID-19 pandemic and the state's mismanagement of the pandemic, the 2021 Tax Reform,[32][33] the Reform to Health of 2020, impunity in crimes against social leaders,[34] and the lack of job and academic opportunities for the general population, as well as unfortunate and out of context comments by the Minister of Finance, Alberto Carrasquilla, led to new mobilizations at the end of the April 2021.

[38] The mismanagement of the protests has resulted in human rights violations,[39] contempt of the authorities, abuse of the authorities, looting, burning and vandalizing buildings,[40] shopping malls, military units; vandalization of monuments,[41][42] the use of weapons prohibited by IHL, direct confrontations between protesters and public forces that leave an enormous balance of injuries and few deaths, among many other problems.