Columbia is a country with 43 million people and the population is ever expanding. With the increasing ratio of populace, a multi faceted civil war is also cropping up. Columbia has already endured nearly four decades of violence that has uprooted at least 2 million people and it has also led to the death of 30,000 people. The people are finding themselves in desperate situations and often children, pregnant woman, the elderly, the disabled and the chronically ill flee from the rural areas into the cities every year because of the trauma and upheaval of war.
The number of internally displaced people in Columbia is at the moment amongst the highest in the world
According to a new Amnesty International document, the number of internally displaced people in Columbia is at the moment amongst the highest in the world and the number is still on the rise. Most of the people who flee are under imminent threat. As they flee from their homes suddenly, they become separated from their families and face discrimination wherever they go. Once they flee, they do not have any prospect to return home. As much of the displacements within Columbia occur silently, the uprooted people simply merge unnoticed into their situations. There is also difficulty in obtaining exact numbers of displaced people, since some are uprooted more than once, and several others do not register with the governments or other agencies.
Internally displaced people are extremely vulnerable, unlike international refugees, because they are devoid of any special status. In fact, there is no legally binding instrument to protect them. They often go unnoticed since national governments pay little interest to them because they remain invisible or inaccessible. According to a survey, 6.7 percent of displaced household had suffered violation and lost a spouse or one child before they migrated. Of the displaced population, 69.3 percent had their own homes before they were uprooted. Before displacement, 40.7 percent were involved in agricultural production, either earning wages or as owners of small or medium-sized plots of land, and 10.0 percent had small or medium-sized businesses.
“I want to go home!” says a displaced Columbian girl and this is not the solitary voice of a single Columbian girl, this is the voice of the millions of internally displaced Columbians who have have been uprooted from their home with no hope of returning back. The whole situation is very bleak and unless the needs of these displaced children and women are addressed adequately, the condition is not going to improve either.
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