Lina Moreno clutches a baby wrapped in a white blanket. She and her two sons have been squatting on a grass verge next to a traffic light in affluent North Bogotá since early morning. It is now dusk. Her eldest son, eight-year-old Nelson, weaves languidly through the waiting traffic carrying a laminated placard that reads, “We are a displaced family because of the violence. Please give what you can. God bless you.” Her younger son, Marino, canvasses privileged Bogotanos for a few measly pesos as he tries to sell garbage bags. The Moreno family has scraped together the equivalent of about $3 today. It has been a good day.
Across the road, this all-too-familiar scene is replayed. Thirty-year-old Carmen Moscera and her three-year-old daughter attempt to peddle boxes of succulent mangoes.
Both families are representative of the most common category of internally displaced person (IDP) in Colombia—Afro-Colombians. Both are also from the department of Chocó on Colombia’s Pacific coast.
Bogotá receives the highest number of IDPs, from all of Colombia’s 32 departments. Every day at least 75 settle in what are known as the “belts of misery” on the capital’s southern periphery. According to the nongovernmental Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES), the country’s civil conflict has displaced nearly three million people since 1985. This would rank Colombia third on the list of countries with the largest displaced populations, behind only Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But the latest official estimate by the government-run Social Solidarity Network (RSS) places the number at 1.26 million. Despite these disparate figures, both sources agree that displacement has significantly increased since 1993 and that each year it
occurs in a greater proportion of the country.
As the civil conflict has escalated in urban areas, particularly in the last three years, migration within and between departments with urban areas has also increased. Medellín, the capital of the department of Antioquia, exemplifies this trend. Colombia’s displacement crisis also spills over its borders into neighboring countries, notably Panama, Venezuela and Ecuador. During 2003, the Catatumbo region bordering Venezuela, an area where armed groups struggle to control illegal crop cultivations, registered the highest rate of displacement in Colombia.
The internal armed conflict—involving government armed forces, various guerrilla groups and paramilitaries—is the main cause of forced displacement. During 2003, RSS reported that 51% of IDPs fled because they had been the passive or active victims of threats and/or attacks by illegal armed groups.
IDP testimonials identify the 12,000-strong rightwing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitary organization and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest leftist guerrilla group, as the principal perpetrators.
The Moscera family fled after receiving threats from paramilitaries. “The paramilitaries wanted control of the area and came to demand our land and small farm,” recounts Carmen Moscera. “They said that if we did not move we would face the consequences. After their third visit, I knew that if we did not leave my family would be in danger.” The Moreno family, on the other hand, feared for their safety after a spate of massacres committed by unidentified armed groups in their area and sought refuge in Bogotá.
In the contested regions of the country, armed groups attempt to control local populations through intimidation and blackmail and by offering protection from rival groups. Residents often fear being branded collaborators or sympathizers by any side, and they leave their communities to avoid being forced to collaborate. “Or sometimes one family member has allegiances to one particular armed group and is being threatened physically by a rival group,” says Luz Angelica, who assists some 30 displaced families daily through her work as a psychologist at the Bogotá-based Center for Migrants, run by the Catholic Church.
Other families flee conflict areas to safeguard their children against forced recruitment into illegal armed groups. A CODHES national survey estimated that between June 2002 and June 2003, 18% of IDPs fled for this reason. Human Rights Watch estimates that 11,000 soldiers under the age of 18 are currently fighting in Colombia’s irregular armies; the FARC alone has about 6,000 child soldiers.
In Colombia human displacement is not just a by-product of war; it is widely used as a strategy or weapon. The illegal armed groups, particularly the paramilitaries, deliberately displace civilians to gain control over territory. Beyond control over territory and populations, the objective is also economic and geo-strategic domination. Thus, the departments with the highest levels of displacement are often rich in natural resources and commercial interests. This is true of the coca-cultivating areas of Putumayo in the south, the oil-producing northeastern departments of Santander and Arauca, and the gold and silver mining regions of Antioquia, near the border with Panama.
Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities predominate in these hotly contested areas and for this reason they are displaced in disproportionate numbers. In June 2004, for example, CODHES reported that the May 21 massacre of at least 30 members of the Wayúu indigenous group, and the subsequent displacement of 300 families, from the La Guajira region in northern Colombia was “directly connected with the desire of paramilitaries to control economic resources along the [Venezuelan] border, especially contraband petroleum.”
Although the illegal armed groups may be mostly to blame, they are not the sole instigators of displacement. The national armed forces and various government policies are also at play. In the first place, the national military contributes to forced displacement by tolerating the actions of paramilitary groups, as the Colombian Commission of Jurists has observed. This well-documented pattern of collusion is an important way in which the military—and, by extension, the government—bears responsibility for conflict-related displacement.
Encouraged by government policy, the military has also played a more direct role in displacing populations. Since President Alvaro Uribe granted judiciary and police powers to the military and introduced his so-called “Democratic Security Policy” in August 2002, IDPs have increasingly cited pressure from governmental armed forces as a prevalent factor in displacement. Both CODHES and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) have noted this in recent reports. Since 1996, the government has given the military emergency powers in Colombia’s “special public order” zones, including the power to make arrests and to conduct raids and searches without a warrant. This has led to an increased incidence of human rights violations and, therefore, flight from affected areas.
The government’s anti-drug strategy further contributes to the displacement crisis. IDPs from certain departments, particularly the southern department of Putumayo, are fleeing the impacts of government-sponsored aerial crop spraying. Using U.S.-provided funds from Plan Colombia, Uribe stepped up crop spraying—ostensibly aimed at destroying coca fields—in an attempt to stem the income armed groups receive from the drug trade. Spraying has not exclusively targeted illicit crops, however; legitimate crops and even residences are often sprayed. Pinpoint accuracy is impossible at any rate, nor are the effects of well-targeted fumigation readily containable. The herbicides employed destroy all vegetation, including food crops, and have direct effects on human health as well as long-term environmental consequences.
Displacement caused by fumigation is difficult to gauge because the government deems people fleeing for this reason to be “economic migrants.” The original planning documents for Plan Colombia estimated that fumigation activities might eventually lead to the displacement of 15,000 people. Since 2001, these activities have uprooted 75,597 people. CODHES reported 29,980 persons displaced by fumigation in 2003, mainly in southeast Colombia.
A lesser but important factor behind displacement has to do with Colombia’s weak judicial institutions and the resulting inability to resolve civil disputes, including those over land ownership, in a timely and nonviolent manner. Gustavo Roldán at the Javeriana University in Bogotá explains that “an ineffective judicial system and the absence of efficient mechanisms for the peaceful settlement of disputes between citizens contributes to the violence in Colombia, which, in turn, leads to internal displacement.”
The plight of displaced persons in Colombia attained significant international profile in May 2004 during the visit of Jan Egeland, the Assistant Secretary-General of the UN for Humanitarian Affairs. He describes the problem of displacement in Colombia as a humanitarian crisis—“the worst in the Western Hemisphere.”
Displacement has far-reaching social and cultural implications. Few IDPs are able to vote. And they often leave behind those practices and the social matrix from which they derive their sense of cultural identity. According to Marino Córdoba from the Association of Displaced Afro-Colombians, “The current government’s inability to protect Afro-Colombians from and during displacement has had a devastating effect on the social fabric of this ethnic group.”
Colombian legislation for the prevention of displacement and for assisting IDPs is among the most extensive in the world. But the dispersal of responsibility among ten separate government agencies has hampered the development of a coherent policy. Although the government’s response to the immediate emergency needs of IDPs has improved, assistance in the aftermath is usually insufficient. Colombian and international non- governmental organizations agree that the Uribe administration has failed to fulfill its promises and legal obligations to IDPs.
The experience of Lina Moreno and her two sons illustrates this. Once registered with the government, an IDP is eligible for government aid for up to three months with the possibility of an additional three-month extension. In practice, this is difficult to obtain. Lina finally registered her family after a laborious five-month bureaucratic process. She has yet to receive the promised assistance.
The UNHCR points out that government assistance to displaced Afro-Colombians, indigenous populations and women is inadequate. It also observes that official attention to mass displacement in rural and border areas often overshadows the problem of individual displacement at the municipal and departmental level.
The government has proclaimed the return and safe resettlement of IDPs to their communities of origin as a top priority. In 2002, President Uribe pledged to return some 30,000 families during his four-year tenure. The latest RSS figures show that the government assisted the return of 11,495 families to their original homes between August 2002 and March 2004. Yet the success or permanency of these returns is questionable, as the original causes for flight often remain, forcing returned families to flee again.
In October 2002, the government spearheaded the high profile return of almost all of the 5,771 inhabitants from the municipality of Bojayá, in the department of Chocó, that had been forcibly displaced five months earlier. The event was hailed as a demonstration of Uribe’s determination to resolve the displacement crisis. Less publicized is the fact that the returnees of Bojayá are still in danger due to ongoing hostilities between guerrilla groups and the paramilitaries, as well as the presence of anti-personnel landmines. Local community leaders say the government failed to provide them with the resources and longer-term protection needed.
The Moreno family wants eventually to return to their home in Chocó. Unfortunately, as Lina Moreno observes, “There’s no point going back only to have to move again. I have no guarantee that the state can protect us, get me my land back and provide health care and schooling for my children. Until this happens, I prefer to stay in Bogotá.” Many IDPs share these sentiments. According to a recent RSS survey, 61% of IDPs wish to stay in their new locations and only 15% want to return.
Colombia’s displacement crisis has received greater attention since the launch of the UNHCR-led Humanitarian Plan of Action in November 2002. This plan aims to protect those at risk of displacement and concentrates more on post-emergency assistance along with the socioeconomic reintegration of IDPs, rather than on providing emergency humanitarian aid.
Another approach to managing the crisis, according to the UNHCR, is to consolidate a multi-agency approach, forging cooperation between nongovernmental international organizations and Colombian government agencies. To help improve the condition of the displaced, the government must also work toward eradicating social prejudice towards them. They are sometimes regarded, in Lina Moreno’s words, as “hustling nuisances at traffic lights.” A recent government-sponsored television campaign urged Colombians to think of displaced persons as fellow citizens and not to ignore their plight. The commercial portrays them as ghostly holograms walking about, ignored.
As far as longer-term solutions that address the causes of the crisis, Senator Piedad Córdoba suggests that a durable solution must “secure the land rights of minority groups and increase the number of collective community land rights among the black community.” Ultimately, however, any solution requires achieving a lasting peace to the long-standing civil conflict and tackling the extreme inequalities in the country’s distribution of wealth and land.
Meanwhile, back at the traffic lights in North Bogotá, the two families from Chocó gather their few belongings, including their unsold fruit and knickknacks, to begin the hour-long journey back to South Bogotá. With a reflective air, Carmen Moscera says, “My immediate concern is that all my children will have a chance to go to school and that I remain healthy so that one day I can find work to support them.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anastasia Moloney is a British freelance journalist working in Bogotá since 2002. She has lectured at the Javeriana University in Bogotá on U.S. history and U.S. relations with Latin America.
