Refugees International (RI) has launched its second mission to Colombia this year to generate greater attention and support for the internally displaced population. More than two million Colombians have been displaced by the internal armed conflict, with around 90,000 people forced to leave their lands in the second trimester of this year alone. Internally displaced people (IDPs) flee the conflict and violence and look for safe sanctuary in the cities. Once in urban centers they have to cope with difficult living conditions, with very limited access to basic services. Even outside their communities of origin leaders of IDP communities continue to face death threats, selective assassinations and disappearances.
Other groups of Colombians, in particular members of the Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, are caught in the conflict between the right-wing paramilitary and the left-wing guerillas. Both illegal armed groups use terror tactics against the local population to achieve strategic control of key areas of the country. In several cases they impede access for people and basic goods to the respective rural communities which become progressively impoverished and where living conditions deteriorate rapidly. Even the government in its own efforts to gain control of the country has been accused of using tactics that do not distinguish between civilians and armed combatants.
The US-sponsored Plan Colombia is tailored to eradicate drug production and trafficking. US assistance, which has amounted to more than 4 billion dollars since 2000, is overwhelmingly concentrated on providing military hardware, training and equipment for the aerial fumigation of the coca fields. Less attention has been paid to the situation of the rural population, direct victims of the illegal armed groups and the drug gangs and often isolated from and marginalized by the authorities. In this context the presence of the international community, particularly in the form of the different United Nations agencies providing humanitarian assistance and contributing to the expansion of areas unaffected by the conflict, becomes essential. Their presence provides an opportunity for the government of Colombia to better respond to this immense crisis of displacement.
RI Advocate Andrea Lari will survey conditions of displacement and meet with national authorities and the UN, agencies providing humanitarian aid, human rights monitors and the displaced themselves. The major objective of the visit will be to identify better ways to provide assistance and security to displaced communities and search for solutions that would allow those who are willing to return home, to do so voluntarily, in safety and dignity.