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July 24, 2009
Bogota's Refugee Crisis
Bogota health officials are calling on the national government to recognize Colombia's massive displacement crisis and deal with the urgent needs of millions of displaced people nationwide. The city administration recently sent officials to investigate health conditions in theTercer Milenio park, where about 1000 recently displaced families have been living.
Their discoveries have been appalling. Among the families at Tercer Milenio, there are at least 131 potential AH1N1 cases as well as several AIDS patients and one man with tuberculosis. The poverty, cramped living spaces and horriblehygienic conditions in Bogotás tent cities make them fertile ground for health crises.
On a side note, it was recently discovered that six policemen raped a young displaced girl at the very same park.
Now, Bogotá officials are saying they expect another 1,200 displaced families to arrive very soon and the city simply cannot take any more refugees. There are already tens of thousands living in dire conditions in slums, parks, and public spaces around the city.
The capital is therefore calling on the national government to finally address the refugee crisis. Too often, they say, refugee tent cities are treated as invasions of public space. The country as a whole lacks an effective, coherent plan to begin to deal with internal displacement.
Meanwhile, unlike other countries with inefficient or indifferent governments, Colombia has little concrete support from the UN and generally receives very little international attention for its displacement crisis. Although there are, by some measures, almost 5 million Colombian refugees - 4 million of them still inside the country - nobody in power is focused on handling this huge social problem.
A representative of the UNHCHR is coming to Bogotá soon to serve as a mediator between the displaced people who have begun to protest at Tercer Milenio park and the national government. The refugees want attention and solutions from the neglectful national government.
There are a couple of obvious reasons why the government has so far refused to seriously tackle these issues.
The first is image. The FTA with the United States is pending congressional approval in Washington and Colombia desperately needs to improve its image in terms of human rights in order for the deal to pass. The government has already launched an aggressive English-language tourism campaign called 'Colombia, the only risk is wanting to stay.' Now, it is placing large monuments, TV screens displaying modern Colombian buildings and tourist attractions, and free coffee stands in strategic locations in downtown Washington, DC in an apparent attempt to improve the country's image in influential political circles.
The second is cost. Committing to its millions of refugees the way other war-torn countries do would be very expensive. Including reparations, such a project could easily cost dozens of billions of dollars, quite a sum for a mid-sized country fighting a decades-old civil war in the midst of an economic crisis.
Posted by Pablo Rojas at July 24, 2009 06:24 PM
