Colombia–Panama border

An internal line becomes a border

Under Spanish rule, Panama and the land that is now Colombia were both part of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, restored in 1739 with Panama under its jurisdiction.^[1] Colombia declared independence from Spain on 20 July 1810. In 1821 Panama declared its own independence from Spain and joined Greater Colombia, a republic that also took in Venezuela and, a year later, Ecuador.^[1]

When Greater Colombia broke up in 1829–30, Panama stayed with the Republic of New Granada, as Colombia was then called.^[1] Panama tried to leave several times. It seceded in 1841 until Colombia put the rebellion down, and again in 1857, only to return a short time later.^[1] In 1855 a Colombian law created the State of Panama, with borders much like the present country's. Article 7 of that law, dated 9 June 1855, fixed the line between Panama and the neighbouring state of Cauca.^[1] That internal line is the border today.

Independence and the 1924 treaty

In 1885 President Núñez set aside the 1863 constitution, which had made each state sovereign, and Panama was reduced to a department of the Republic of Colombia. It stayed one until it proclaimed independence on 3 November 1903.^[1] The United States recognised Panama on 13 November 1903. Five days later the two signed a treaty that put the Canal Zone under US administration.^[1]

On 6 April 1914 Colombia signed a treaty at Bogotá with the United States to settle the differences that Panama's independence had caused between them. In it Colombia recognised Panama and described the border, taking the 1855 law as its basis.^[1] Colombia and Panama then signed their own boundary treaty at Bogotá on 20 August 1924. It confirmed the 1855 line and set up a mixed commission to mark it on the ground (demarcation).^[1]

“From Cape Tiburon to the headwaters of the Rio de la Miel and following the mountain chain by the ridge of Gandi to the Sierra de Chugargun and that of Mali going down by ridges of Nigue to the heights of Aspave and from thence to a point on the Pacific half way between Cocalito and La Ardita”^[1]

Fourteen pillars along the watershed

The commission's work was approved in an exchange of notes at Panama City on 17 June 1938. It listed 14 boundary pillars with their coordinates and heights, from a first-class pillar at the northwest point of Cabo Tiburón to another on the Pacific coast.^[1] In between, the line mostly follows watersheds: first the divide around the headwaters of the Río la Miel, then the divide between the Atlantic and Pacific on the Serranía del Darién, then the divide between the Juradó and Balsas rivers.^[1]

One stretch needed extra work. The commission could not settle the pillar at the Altos de Aspave, so the two governments agreed in notes of 3 December 1937 that it would sit where the watershed meets the meridian of 77°47′33″W. From there a straight line runs to the Pacific pillar.^[1] The border climbs to 6,150 feet (about 1,875 m) in the Serranía del Darién. In 1966 the US Geographer reported no known disputes over the line.^[1]

The Darién Gap

The Pan-American Highway runs from Alaska almost to the tip of South America, broken only by the roughly 60-mile Darién Gap. No road crosses the jungle, which covers about 10,000 square miles of northern Colombia and much of Panama's southernmost province.^[3] Plans to close the gap ran into steep mountains, heavy rain, hundreds of rivers and the Atrato Swamp. In 1975 the Sierra Club sued the US Department of Transportation over the road, and the risk of spreading foot-and-mouth disease to cattle led federal judges to halt construction for nearly two decades.^[2] JSTOR Daily calls Panama and Colombia the only neighbouring countries in the world with no road link between them.^[2]

Much of the border is protected on both sides. Panama's Darién National Park, about 575,000 hectares, covers almost the entire border with Colombia. Emberá, Wounaan and Kuna (Guna) peoples and Afro-descendant communities live inside it.^[4] It adjoins Colombia's Los Katíos National Park, 72,000 hectares, declared a national park in 1973 and a World Heritage Site in 1994.^[5] UNESCO lists a possible extension of the Pan-American Highway near Los Katíos among the threats to the park.^[5]

A migration route

Colombians fleeing conflict began crossing the Darién in the late 1990s. Panama started counting crossings in 2010, and over the next decade they averaged fewer than 11,000 a year.^[3] In 2021 more than 130,000 people crossed on foot, and in 2022 almost 250,000.^[3] Most took a ferry across the Gulf of Urabá from Necoclí to Acandí or Capurganá, then walked four to ten days to Panamanian villages such as Bajo Chiquito. The Gulf Clan (Clan del Golfo), an armed group in northern Colombia, increasingly controlled passage.^[3]

Panama's migration service counted a record 520,085 crossings in 2023 and 302,203 in 2024. About 69% of the 2024 crossers were Venezuelans.^[6] After José Raúl Mulino became president in July 2024, Panama fenced parts of the Darién with barbed wire and deported migrants on flights paid for by the United States.^[6] In 2025 the flow almost stopped. Panama counted just 2,937 crossings from January to August, and more than 14,000 migrants, most of them Venezuelan, were heading back south instead. The reasons returnees gave most often were being denied entry to the United States (49%) and changes in US immigration policy (46%).^[7]