ore than 15,000 Colombians were forced to abandon their homes in the first three months of this year, mainly poor families and farmers: as denounced by Colombia’s top rights group CODHES (Consultoría para los derechos humanos y el desplazamiento), defining it the worst displacement in the last decade of the country’s armed conflict.
In addition to fighting between the army and guerrillas of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), the exodus is also provoked by the controversial US-financed fumigations of coca crops. According to CODHES, drug-running groups and right-wing paramilitaries move their cocaine production operations into new areas to escape the fumigations, therefore displacing residents and the ‘campesinos’ (farmers).
In its report, the rights organization indicated that almost 9,000 people were forced from their homes in the town of El Charco (southwest province of Narino): “The province is a laboratory of war in which all the factors that generate Colombia's armed conflict come together”.
The government of Ecuador recently protested against Bogotá authorities for the resumption of aerial fumigations – with the contested ‘glyphosate’ herbicide – on coca crops long the border between the two nations, threatening international legal action. The guerrilla and lack of security in Colombia have displaced more than 3.5-million, based on UN estimates, at least 4-million according to other sources.
(From MISNA)