« Column Link #2 | Main | My first encounter with paramilitaries in action »
July 16, 2009
Displacement and AH1N1
According to Amnesty International, internal displacement in Colombia increased 24% between 2007 and 2008. Last year, 380,000 people were forced to leave their homes due to armed conflict, adding to the millions who have been displaced in recent decades. As I've mentioned in a previous post, Colombia has the world's second largest internally displaced population.
These tragic statistics indicate two things. First, they confirm recent reports that violence is increasing throughout Colombia. While actual homicide statistics may continue their gradual downward trend, the fact is that new paramilitary groups and drug organizations have begun to fill the territorial and criminal void left by the demobilized paramilitary fronts. Despite military gains against guerrillas and a peace agreement with paramilitary groups, the resilience of the drug trade keeps fueling conflict in Colombia.
It also shows a particular characteristic of Colombia's conflict. While Colombia's war does not claim nearly as many lives as it did years ago, it continues to drive hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in part due to the importance of territory for the drug trade. Drug production and trafficking are the engine of Colombia's conflict and armed groups are always conquering vast amounts of territory for drug production, processing and trafficking routes. Put together, all the land lost by Colombia's displaced population constitutes a territory about the size of Denmark.
One tragic displacement story is that of the Embera tribe. The Embera are an indigenous group from western Colombia who have for years been in the crossfire between guerrillas, paramilitaries and the Colombian military. Their ancestral lands are crucial drug trafficking routes and strategic military territory. They have been so devastated by war that, today, the Embera are an endangered tribe facing cultural and ethnic extinction.
To make matters worse, recent reports have suggested that many of the AH1N1 cases in Bogota are actually Embera refugees. Indeed, displaced people often live in terrible and unsanitary conditions, cramped in tent cities, shacks and crowded shelters.
Without proper attention from the state, the Embera refugee population has become the epicenter of Bogota's growing AH1N1 problem. Sadly, before flu fears became a reality, few people in Bogota or Colombia cared or did much about the living conditions of Embera refugees or hundreds of thousands of other displaced people in Bogota.
Posted by Pablo Rojas at July 16, 2009 10:53 AM
