“In Chocó there are approximately 2,000 people reported missing”: director of the Missing Persons Search Unit, UBPD.
Geographic conditions and armed conflict are the main challenges for search efforts in this Pacific department.
Inter-institutional articulation is crucial to establish differential approaches for Afro and indigenous communities that allow a more effective search in accordance with the needs of the territory.
The church continues to be a legitimizer in the search, reaching places where the presence of the State still needs to be strengthened.
The Search Unit for Persons Reported as Missing (UBPD) has a permanent presence in the territories. It is for this reason that the director of the entity, Luz Janeth Forero Martínez, visited the capital of Chocó to learn how the search for missing people is progressing and to closely explore the needs of the territory and the coordination with institutions and entities in the region through of differential ethnic approaches, in order to advance more effectively and accurately in the search for missing people from Afro and indigenous communities.
Forero expressed in the Quibdó cathedral the importance of the Catholic Church in this process. “It is a natural ally for the search. In many territories of Colombia, people continue to go to mass and attend spiritual spaces, because for us as a State entity it is still difficult to enter the territories,” he said.
Likewise, he stated that the Universe of people reported missing in the department is approximately two thousand and that the work of the Chocó territorial unit of the UBPD is distributed throughout four subregions: Atrato, Baudó, Pacífico and San Juan , the latter being the one with the highest number of search requests.
“The search for people reported missing in Colombia is one of the great challenges we have at the UBPD. There are challenges derived from the great Universe of people to search for, which are around 104,000. To this we add the geographical conditions that are so difficult for searching in the country, the need to do so from differential, ethnic or territorial approaches and, fundamentally, that we also continue searching in the midst of the conflict. All this ends up making the search difficult,” said the director.
At the end of the day, Forero visited the Legal Medicine facilities in Quibdó, delving into the inter-institutional collaboration that is provided and established with all State entities.