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Manuel Suárez, indigenous community leader, speaking with RI's team in February.
In February 2012, RI visited the riverside community of Gambote, in Colombia's Bolívar Department. We spoke with Manuel Suárez, a local indigenous leader who had been displaced by violence in neighboring Córdoba Department. But as Manuel told us in the video below, his community needed to be relocated again – this time because of devastating floods in the area.
For years Colombia's 1.2 million indigenous people have been stuck in a precarious situation, with violence, disappearances, threats, and forced displacement continuing to plague their community. So in the coming months, as Colombia rolls out a new set of laws and institutions to aid displaced people, it will be critical that the indigenous – and especially those doubly affected by force and flood – are assisted.
For more on the implementation of the Victims Law, see our Back From the Field [1] page on RI’s recent mission to Colombia. RI’s full report from that mission will be published in early September.