09/27/2005

Luzia has been living in this room for the last five months with her three children. When Refugees International visited with her, she looked disoriented and worried about her immediate future. Her husband was killed in early May by the left wing guerilla army FARC because he was accused of being an informant for the Colombian Army and she had to flee her village. She does not have any family members or friends in town and said, “I do not know what to do. I cannot go home to my village. I am afraid I will also be killed. We were living well there, we had our fields and my husband was a good hunter. But they killed him, he was a good man. Where shall I go now?”

In mid-May all seven communities living along the river Buey, tributary of the river Atrato in the Colombian Pacific Department of Chocó, left their villages by boat and fled to the city of Quibdó. A few selective murders of villagers and the fear that FARC would soon descend from the higher part of the hills and target other community members sparked the displacement. More than 300 families amounting to some 1,700 people quickly navigated the river to Quibdó. Some families went to stay with family members or friends, while the rest gathered and camped in the offices of the local organization representing the Afro-Colombian communities of the area. While there they received food assistance and some families obtained subsides for renting temporarily a room in the boroughs of the city.

The displacement lasted around three months. This matches the average maximum period during which the Social Solidarity Network, the government agency in charge of coordinating the humanitarian response to forced displacement, provides assistance. In extraordinary cases food help can be extended for another three months. But that was not the case for the communities of the Buey River. The people had a hard time in Quibdó. Being a displaced person often means being considered by the local population a sympathizer of the FARC or a disguised combatant. Displaced have a tough time to find a job to complement the limited food assistance received. Their rural skills are not useable in the urban economy.

Additionally, the local authorities have been pushing them to return, despite the fact that their villages are not safe enough. Further assistance was conditional on people’s acceptance to leave Quibdó. A displaced person who returned last August to his village along the river told RI, “Since we are suffering hunger here and things will become worse, we have to come back. We do not feel safe here but we had no other option.”

Luzia and her children are the only people left in that same room that hosted tens of others before. RI interviewed the official responsible for the Social Solidarity Network and asked why Luzia was still living in those conditions. The only explanation was that she was “being difficult and unable to find a new accommodation despite the financial support provided by the Network.” No attention was paid to her psychological needs and the trauma of having her husband killed, which appeared so evident to RI when we talked to her. “Yes, they offered me some money for renting a place for 3 months and then, where should I go?”

Advocate Andrea Lari just returned from a three-week assessment mission of internal displacement in Colombia.