Colombia: Capital of Internally Displaced People

[Judi Lynn]

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

[bemildred]

1. Going on fifty years of it too.

But there is a coffee shortage in Venezuela, whoo!

[Bacchus39]

2. but not in Colombia, sounds like the FARC is the biggest problem n/t

s

[bemildred]

3. Well, indeed it is, but it does not appear that the "problem" is being solved.

Maybe it is time to rethink the approach being taken to solving the "problem". How long is this shit supposed to continue? At what point does one admit that the "problem" is really the status quo ante?

[Bacchus39]

4. the status quo ante? the problem is the continuing violence to this day

La Violencia period up to present day seems to in many respects to be worse than status quo ante event though democratic conditions seem to be improving.

anyway, other strategies have been tried. giving the FARC a huge territory, and negotiations. Nothing seems to have worked. yet the FARC has suffered setbacks in recent years and violence has decreased in general. Given not the past year, but is the recent increase due to war violence, paramilitaries, drug violence, common crime violence??

Seems to me you get rid of the FARC and paras then you go along way in preventing internal displacement (moving away from home). its not going to happen overnight. not sure what the rebels are looking for, install a marxist government?? How about they lay down their arms and re-integrate back into society. Push their reform ideas through legal democratic political means. Why is the onus only on the government to "solve" the problem. The rebels and others, of course, are the problem.

[bemildred]

5. "status quo ante" == "the way things were before"

At what point do you admit that the present situation is "the way things were before"? Isn't fifty years long enough to admit you are not getting anywhere? The present situation is the "status quo", the present initiatives to change it are the same stuff that's been going on for fifty years. It's all bullshit. At what point do you admit that it's all bullshit and look around for something new?

[Bacchus39]

6. yeah, I know what it means. how about status quo semper then??

any ideas on something new? where will the FARC be under the leadership of a Green Party presidency?

[bemildred]

7. First you got to admit what you are doing is stupid.

Then you can consider what you might want to do instead. Should it be up to FARC to decide what Colombia should do, or should Colombia decide on it's own way of going forward? It's not up to me to tell Colombia what to do, I'm just pointing out that what they are doing, what they have been doing, is stupid, has not worked, isn't going to work. So sue me.

[Bacchus39]

9. they also triedan amnesty program for both the FARC and paras

the FARC didn't accept it. I don't see the FARC and paras ceasing their activities if the government said what they have being doing for 50 years "is stupid".

[bemildred]

11. Well, I'm not going to have that argument with you.

All I will say is that Alvaro's "peace through strength" policies have not worked out like he planned.

[naaman fletcher]

8. Isn't violence in fact way down in the last 5 years or so?

Obviously things are bad, but isn't that progress?

[bemildred]

10. You would have to know how it comes out to know whether it's progress,

or what it is progress towards. No doubt it's progress towards something, but what? It appears to me that Uribe has made modest "improvements" in some areas (fending FARC off) at the expense of things getting worse in others (relations with his neighbors, dependency on the USA, militarization). But as I said, I don't pretend to know where things are going, I just see that it's one of the longest running insurgencies in the world at present.

[naaman fletcher]

12. Fair enough. Nt

[Judi Lynn]

13. The world's WORST displaced population definitely would be getting constant headlines here

if it were located in Venezuela. Not a shadow of a doubt they would use something like that as a reason to violently invade and overthrow the President and put their own filthy butcher in as President, someone just like Pinochet, or the scum who governed Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, etc., etc., etc. every time a president who served the people rather than the oligarchy was elected.

[Bacchus39]

14. you always post this. and the only ones who say that an invasion of Venezuela is going to happen

is Chavez and some of his supporters here. and some of the same argue that Colombia should be occupied by the UN to solve their internal problems.