Over the past two decades around 3.5 million people- roughly 80% of Colombia's population- have been driven from their homes, often at gunpoint, as part of the country's conflict involving its military, leftist rebels, armed gangs, and drug traffickers.
Across the country, hundreds of thousands of people displaced by paramilitaries and guerilla groups face great afflictions and danger in their quest to recover their land. some made forced sales after being told "either you sell to me or your widow will." Others abandoned their plots. Two thirds of the 3.3 million Colombians officially registered as internally displaced claim to have lost land upon fleeing.
Extremely unequal land ownership is both a cause and a consequence of the political conflicts that have plagued Colombia for decades. In 1954 fewer than 24,00 people (approx. 3% of landowners) held 55% of all farmland; by 2005, 16,350 landowners (0.4% of the total) held 62.6% of the land, whereas about 3.3million smallholders owned just 8.8%, according to official figures. Drug traffickers and paramilitaries (often the same people) snatched huge tracts of rural land in the 1980s and 1990s to launder their profits in what amounted to a violent and illegal agrarian "counter-reform."
In short, threats directed at civilians by the illegal armed groups have become the single greatest cause of internal displacement in Colombia. The violence is characterized by attacks and threats by armed groups against the civilian population. Shameful as it is, this humanitarian crisis is widely unheard of and ignored.
No comments:
Post a Comment