Recently, the Internal Displacement Observatory (IDMC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) delivered a report on this scourge that forces communities to flee their territories because of the armed conflict. According to the metric, Colombia ranks fourth in the world.
In 2022, Colombia suffered up to 339,000 new forced displacements due to violence in the country. According to the organizations, this is the highest figure in a decade, due to the increase in attacks by illegal armed groups, such as guerrillas and drug trafficking organizations.
The balance of 2022 indicated that the violence caused 71 million people to flee their territories to other areas in their same countries. These organizations pointed out that the situations that had the greatest impact on this figure were the war between Russia and Ukraine, and catastrophes, such as the one that occurred in Pakistan, which together accounted for 20% of the total number of displaced persons in the world.
The concern for the balance is notorious on the part of the directors of these organizations, who described the figure of 71 million people as “extremely high”.
“A large part of the increase is caused by the war in Ukraine, obviously. But also because of the floods in Pakistan, new and existing conflicts in the world and a number of sudden or slow catastrophes that we saw from the Americas to the Pacific,” IDMC head Alexandra Bilak told AFP.
The list of the ten countries with the most displacement in the world is made up of Syria, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine, Colombia, Ethiopia, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan, from the highest to the lowest number of displaced people.
The balance indicated that a significant percentage has to do with the armed conflict that part of the previous countries have suffered over the years, but that the increase in good is due to the natural catastrophes that occurred in 2022, since in that year 32.6 million people to flee in 2022, 40% more than in 2021, something that had never happened before.
“Conflict and disasters have combined in the past year to exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and inequalities, causing displacement on a scale never seen before,” said Jan Egeland, head of the NRC in a press release.
International Red Cross: displacement, confinement and use of explosives increased in Colombia
The dynamics of the multiple armed conflicts in Colombia have changed after the Peace Agreement with the Farc-EP, both in terms of dynamics and territories. But the effects on the civilian population and the violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) continue with displacements, confinements, disappearances, attacks with explosives, homicides, among others, according to the report Colombia: Humanitarian Challenges 2023 of the International Committee for Humanitarian Red Cross.
As of December 1, 2022, 58,010 people were massively displaced from their territories, 46% of them from Nariño, followed by 16% from Chocó and 12% from Valle del Cauca. Individual displacements totaled 123,220 victims, mainly from Arauca, Valle del Cauca, Nariño and Antioquia. Regarding confinement, the international humanitarian assistance organization registered 39,404 victims, mainly in Nariño, Chocó and Valle del Cauca; 91% of the victims were indigenous and Afro-descendants.
The report indicates that the occurrence of these dynamics of the internal conflict have changed territorially. While Nariño and Chocó have been the most affected by displacements and confinements in the last four years, in the department of Arauca an increase in confinement was registered by 10% and went from 763 victims of individual displacement to more than 19,000 in 2022 With Infobae