Colombia: Capital of Internally Displaced People
Wednesday, 5 May 2010, 10:29 am
by COHA Research Fellow Maya Wilson
Having an estimated population of 43,677,372, Colombia possesses the second largest population on the South American continent. With a steamy history of political and social unrest, an undisputed leadership in the illicit narcotics trade, corruption, endemic violence, along with unrelenting guerrilla and paramilitary insurgencies, the quality of Bogotá’s execution of authority remains to be questioned. It also has caused the Colombian citizenry to seek refuge both internally within the nation and in the urban sprawl of cities in neighboring countries such as Honduras, Nicaragua, Jamaica, and the United States.
Colombia’s current humanitarian pandemic is so dire that many analysts and organizations have noted that the country has surpassed Sudan as having the most staggering internal displacement crisis in the world. In 2007 alone, conflict between Colombian government forces and armed groups resulted in the displacement of more than 300,000 people, only adding to the millions that have been displaced in the country since the 1980s. According to the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES), a Colombian nongovernmental organization, about 380,000 nationals were forced to leave their homes in 2008 due to armed conflict, and it estimates that the total figure for displaced Colombians amounts to as many as 4.6 million since the early 1980s.
Perspective of Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre
Established by the Norwegian Refugee Council, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDM), an international entity based in Geneva, Switzerland that dedicates itself to monitoring conflict-induced internal displacement, maintains that Colombia is the only Latin American country with an increasing number of displaced people, even surpassing internally-displaced crises all over the world. Collectively, Colombians attribute death threats, recruitment pressure to join the guerrilla and / or paramilitary forces, and clashes between the military and other security forces as being among the top reasons that lead them to have to abandon their homes. Moreover, in their 2007 Global Overview of Trends and Development report, IDM has declared that Colombia, Iraq and Sudan together account for approximately 50 percent of the world’s displaced people.
While there are numerous complex and multi-faceted factors that account for the displacement of Colombians, political violence remains the most compelling factor, a dynamic that is deeply rooted in Colombian history. Colombians have long been forced from their homes as a decades-long civil war between left-wing guerrilla groups, pitted against right-wing paramilitary organizations and the Colombian military, have persisted. Furthermore, intertwined dynamics of internal armed conflict, drug trafficking and common crime intensify Colombia’s displacement crisis and its human rights situation, according to a United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) report that highlights the human rights situation on the continent.
IDM’s analysis of Colombia’s current crisis reveals that 580,879 persons have been displaced to date by the guerrilla groups–273,508 by paramilitaries and 13,977 by the government forces. Colombia’s most prominent active guerilla group is the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the lesser known force is the National Liberation Army (ELN). The FARC, who strengthened its presence in the country between the 1960s and 1980s, have been known to engage in tactics such as ransom kidnappings, whereby wealthy landowners or tourists are targets for abduction, as are important domestic and international officials.
Impact of Displacement
With approximately eighty percent of internally displaced Colombians seeking refuge in urban centers, the displacement phenomenon continues to have a significant social impact on Colombian society. Once removed to the cities, the internally displaced habitually encounter difficulty finding adequate housing, obtaining health care and locating employment in order to be able to support themselves. As a result, many displaced persons and their families have no option but to settle in shanty towns where basic services, such as clean water, sewage and electricity, are lacking or non-existent, thus making the transition from rural to urban life disturbing and very rough. In addition, a significant proportion of the population of displaced persons consisting of women and children are being forced to take up arms and fight as soldiers in a conflict that they repudiate.
More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1005/S00098.htm