Colombian Coast Guard
maritime security component of the Colombian Navy
The Colombian Coast Guard is the coastal defense, search and rescue, and maritime law enforcement branch of the Military Forces of Colombia. Equipped with modern electronic surveillance and location systems at land stations, the Coast Guard covers the Caribbean and Pacific coasts and focuses on the repression of crime at sea, the control of the preservation of the marine environment and search and rescue operations.
The National Navy, through the Coast Guard, is a military maritime service which performs public safety and environmental functions, as well as protecting economic interests in the maritime areas under its jurisdiction, including the coasts, ports and internal waters of the country. Its characteristic mix of military capabilities, defense and support in humanitarian assistance operations, serves the country in five main functions, which are: sea safety, sea control, sea transit and MIOs.
History
Decree 1874 of August 2, 1979, signed by the President of the Republic of Colombia, created the Coast Guard dependent on the National Navy, with functions within marine waters jurisdictions.
Since then, the Coast Guard, which depends on the National Navy, has a Command, a Maritime Safety Department and an Administrative Department.
It also has 13 units afloat, crewed by 171 sailors, operating in the Colombian Atlantic. They are responsible for ensuring maritime security and the interests of the nation in the areas of jurisdiction.
In 1993, the Coast Guard activated a Command in the Pacific to attend simultaneously to both seas and thus fulfill its functions of defense of national sovereignty, control of fishing, repression of contraband, search and rescue, protection of the marine environment and natural resources.
In addition to these functions, the Coast Guard controls illegal migration and immigration, collaborates with oceanographic and hydrographic investigations, protects the nation's renewable and non-renewable resources, controls maritime traffic and supports government and private activities at sea.
The public source identifies “Colombian Coast Guard” as maritime security component of the Colombian Navy. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Colombian, Coast and Guard.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q96375246. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1874, 1979 and 1993.
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This entry incorporates text from “Colombian Coast Guard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.