More than 3.5 million out of the country’s 40 million people have been displaced during the last two decades, according to CODHES, an authoritative non-governmental source. The authorities’ figure is only 1.8 million, mainly because they only started systematic reg-istration of internally displaced people (IDPs) in 2000 and do not recognise the CODHES figures from 1985 to 2000. Almost one million people have been displaced since the gov-ernment of President Álvaro Uribe took office in 2002, according to both sources, al-though their figures have started diverging over the past two years; the government figures show around 160,000 people newly displaced in 2005, whereas CODHES recorded more than 300,000 new IDPs. Both figures are in any case indicative of a significant escalation of the conflict since 2002, tremendous suffering, imbedded violence, and social, political and economic exclusion in a deeply fragmented country. Massacres, attacks and intimida-tion of civilian population by the armed groups, particularly in rural areas continue to be reported. None of the IDPs in Colombia live in camps but there are areas where the majority of the inhabitants are IDPs. Typically, they flee from rural areas to shantytowns around lar-ger towns and struggle to make a living. However, increasing control by paramilitary groups and crime-related violence often force the IDPs to flee again within the urban ar-eas.

More Info See the report attached

Back