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News > Latin America

Colombia Has World’s Largest Internally Displaced Population

  • Colombians hold a demonstration in support of citizens displaced during the country's armed conflicts.

    Colombians hold a demonstration in support of citizens displaced during the country's armed conflicts. | Photo: Reuters

Published 23 May 2017
Opinion

Colombia's internally displaced population, 7.2 million people, is higher than other war-torn countries like Syria and Iraq.

A joint report published by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, IDMC, and Norwegian Refugee Council, NRC, has found that Colombia has the largest internally displaced population in the world.

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The report, Global Report on Global Displacement, outlined that with an internally displaced population of approximately 7.2 million people, Colombia leads other war-torn countries such as Syria (6,300,000 displaced) and Iraq (3,000,000 displaced).

Christian Visnes, regional director of NRC for Latin America, lamented that the peace deal signed between FARC revolutionaries and the Colombian government has yet to produce a post-war atmosphere favorable for lasting peace and for people to return to their homes.

Last week, Colombia's Constitutional Court took a major step in slowing down the peace accord by terminating the “fast track” process for approving the deal in Congress. From now on, the laws and reforms that implement the peace accords and protections for demobilized FARC members will have to be voted on article by article, rather than in blocks, significantly slowing or even halting the process.

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Meanwhile, right-wing paramilitaries and other illegal armed groups are filling the vacuum left by demobilized FARC guerrillas in rural Colombia. To this end, the document reiterated that large numbers of displaced people are motivated by the presence of these groups, including crime organizations known as the Gulf Clan.

Prensa Latina reported that a reduction in the number of people who were displaced in 2015 and 2016 hasn't resulted in significant changes for the total number of people displaced in Colombia.

According to NRC, the five-decade-long armed conflict in Colombia has produced the most prolonged and grave humanitarian crisis in the Americas. The U.S.-backed Colombian Armed Forces and right-wing paramilitaries are responsible for most of the crimes associated with the conflict.

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