UN warns Colombia mired in 'grave crisis'

[ze_dscherman]

Colombia's drug wars have created the gravest humanitarian crisis in the western hemisphere, driving two million people from their homes and threatening indigenous groups with extinction, according to a senior UN official.

Jan Egeland, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said the debt-ridden nation was reluctant to divert funds to the ever-growing numbers of displaced people fleeing the conflict between left-wing guerillas and right-wing paramilitaries, or forced off their land by the cocaine cartels.

SNIP

Forced internal displacement reached a peak in 2002, when 320,000 people - about 800 per day - were driven from their homes. The majority, like Mercedes Perez, were victims of the illegal paramilitary group, the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC).

SNIP

Collaboration between the paramilitaries and the Colombian armed forces, which has received military aid from Washington worth $2.5bn (£1.4bn) over the past four years, has been widely documented and is said to be rife.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/colombia/story/0,11502,1214340,00.html