People driven out of homes by violence petition U.N. for help to pressure government to fulfill obligations to assist people
ALTOS DE FLORIDA, Colombia (AlertNet) - Perched precariously on a ridge on the outskirts of Bogota, the hilltop slum of Altos de Florida is home to thousands of Colombians who have fled their homes to escape decades of conflict.
Here, and across dozens of other slums dotted all over south Bogota, more than 35,000 internally displaced refugees (IDPs) struggle to scrape a living or find jobs that are hard to come by.
“To get food for our children we have to beg at the traffic lights,” said Petrona Mosquera, a displaced mother of four, who lives in a ramshackle home made of bits of wood and scrap metal.
“There are some women who have to sell their bodies to put food on the table,” she added.
Mosquera, who was driven from her home because of paramilitary violence over a decade ago, was one of many people who petitioned U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Antonio Guterres for help during his visit to the Latin American country last weekend.
Mosquera, along with community leaders representing displaced groups, asked for more pressure to be put on Bogota to meet its obligations to provide IDPs with humanitarian aid, health care, education, housing and job opportunities, as stipulated by Colombia’s constitution.
“We don’t need any more laws,” Alvaro Ortiz, a community leader told Guterres during the commissioner’s brief visit to Altos de Florida.
“We just need the government to ensure that what the law and constitution already says in terms of protecting displaced people is properly applied and implemented.”
He added that because of red tape and overstretched state agencies, few displaced families receive what they are fully entitled to from the government.
Guterres said Colombia had the most advanced laws and government agencies protecting the rights of displaced people in the world, but these laws were not being implemented.
“The big challenge is to make them concrete and put them into practice. This is an enormous challenge,” Guterres told community leaders.
"The government is aware that it’s not just enough to have good laws,” he added.
Colombia has the second largest number of IDPs after Sudan due to fighting between government troops and leftist rebels, drug gangs and paramilitary groups. The conflict has uprooted four million Colombians during the last three decades.
FLOODS ADD TO IDP WOES
Adding to the problems faced by Colombia’s internal refugees is the devastation caused by weeks of torrential rains.
The unusually severe rainy season has left at least 280 people dead, 63 missing, and forced hundreds of thousands to evacuate their homes.
Around 2 million lives have been disrupted by the worst flooding in over 40 years, and earlier this month, the Colombian government declared a national emergency. It estimates that at least 55,000 Colombians will need new homes.
Along Colombia’s Atlantic coast, one of the worst affected areas, some villages have been totally submerged and wiped out by the flooding. Damaged roads and collapsed bridges have cut off communities across Colombia.
Displaced communities living in slum areas have been worst hit by the flooding and are particularly at risk of mud and landslides.
“We still need help from the local authorities to identify which houses are especially at risk from landslides in this area,” local resident, Alvaro Ortiz, told UNHCR’s Guterres.
In slum areas, the heavy rains have turned unpaved steep paths into gushing muddy rivers and have flooded homes where residents have been forced to wade in knee-deep.
“It’s been very difficult,” said Jacqueline Escobar, an IDP and resident of Altos de Florida. “There have been landslides in nearby neighbourhoods. For some, it’s been a double displacement. They’ve been driven from their homes because of the violence and now because of the floods.”
Across Colombia, the government is struggling to deal with the floods.
Many temporary shelters set up by the government and Colombian Red Cross are full and there are growing concerns about the spread of diseases, like malaria, and food and fuel shortages.
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