FORCED DISPLACEMENT IN COLOMBIA, A COMPLEX PROBLEM BY DANIEL FELIPE RIVERA

FORCED DISPLACEMENT IN COLOMBIA, A COMPLEX PROBLEM

No one can doubt that Colombia has had one of the longest conflicts in the world, since the sixties. The constant war between the right governments and the left guerrillas, which has left the population in middle. They have not taken in account the consequences lived by the most vulnerable people. Towns completely exterminated, widows, orphans, mutilated, violations, kidnappings, are some of the consequences produced by the war, for these reasons a huge amount of people have had to leave their hometown. Displaced have had to move to the main cities searching for opportunities. The displacement has been inherent to the Colombian war, and there are people that don't understand the real magnitude and the consequences for a developing country as Colombia.

People from field coming to the cities are the most obvious effect in forced displacements; normally, they come with one hand forward and the other backward. The poverty conditions are the reason the displaced begin to search for assistance, but in our society, this kind of assistance is very limited, so the only way is ask for money in the streets, or even saddest, stealing. Obtaining a place to settle is other issue, because normally the displaced just find places in the boundaries of the cities. Poverty belts are the specific name given to the displaced in the city’s boundaries, and are very common in Medellin and Bogotá. Normally the poverty belts don't have utilities, health posts, police stations, appropriate schools; we could say the poverty belts are abandoned by the state. Abandonment increases problems like violence, violations, drug addictions, murders, all kinds of illnesses, armed gangs, these factors not only affect the lowest layers, also the highest layers suffer consequences as insecurity and paradoxically displacements and uncontrolled expansion, that force the government to invest capital that maybe doesn't have.

I think the displacement is such that it could carry a complete country to the disaster, and the state has to solve the problem and the solution begins forgiving the differences between main beliefs, left and right, and leaving behind the insignificant wars. Attending the current displaced, creating study opportunities, jobs and other missing things are needed for our society.