The last his family heard of him, Nestor Flórez Alarcón was driving from his family’s hometown of Cúcuta, Colombia to the nearby town of Sardinata.

Rincón was only six at the time, but he clearly remembers the following events. The kidnappers contacted the family and demanded $100,000 US as ransom, an amount Rincón’s family could not afford.

Rincón’s grandfather eventually made a deal with the kidnappers and drove to a location six hours from Cúcuta to deliver the ransom. With a gun to his head, the kidnappers told Rincón’s grandfather that he would find his son waiting for him at home.

Conflict in Colombia has forced millions from their homes. These children have resettled in Cartagena. Photo courtesy of Mercy Corps

Alarcón was never seen again.

“One of the hardest things is seeing my grandmother crying every Dec. 14 . . . for having lost her son for no acceptable reason,” Rincón says.

The everyday violence in Colombia spurred Rincón to go to law school. Last year he received a law degree from Santo Tomas University in Bucaramanga, Colombia, and he says he plans to get a second degree in human rights.

Rincón says he hopes to work in international law on behalf of Colombians affected by the country’s ongoing civil war. One group he has focused his attention on are internally displaced Colombians, those who have been forced to flee their homes to other parts of the country, sometimes more than once.

For decades, Colombian civilians have been caught in the crossfire of a brutal conflict. The Colombian government estimates that the war has displaced 2.4 million people, while some NGOs peg the number closer to 4 million. Either way, it is one of the worst displacement crises in the world today, second only to Sudan. The main responsibility for the welfare of the internally displaced falls to the government, but critics say the state is not doing enough to reach out to the rural areas of the country, creating a division between urban and rural Colombia.       

“You have what we call the ‘institutionalized Colombia,’ which is in the cities, the larger towns, where there’s a strong government presence, government institutions, there’s an economy that’s doing well,” says Gary Burniske, the Colombian country director for Mercy Corps, a humanitarian NGO. “And then there’s what I’d call the ‘Colombian conflict,’ which are rural areas where the armed actors are free to move, and they’re the ones that call the shots in terms of what happens in those areas.”

Vying for power

Colombia’s conflict is split three ways: between the government, left-wing guerrilla organizations and various paramilitary groups, says Cristina Rojas, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University.

The common perception of Colombian affairs assumes that the fighting is a drug war, but the conflict is also about land and resources. The two main guerrilla groups, called the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC) and Ejército de Liberación Nacional (the National Liberation Army, or ELN) formed in the mid-1960s, demanding land redistribution and social reform for the peasant farmers.

The paramilitary groups evolved as vigilante groups set up by right-wing landowners to protect their assets, sometimes co-operating with the government forces to keep or regain control in areas with guerrilla activity. 

“You’ve got the ELN fighting the FARC which are fighting the paramilitaries, and everyone’s fighting the government,” says Burniske.

This is where the drugs come into play. Coca plantations and control of drug routes are a main source of funding for the guerrillas and paramilitaries, roping the government into an eradication battle to destroy the crops. When push comes to shove, the peasants of rural Colombia are caught in the crossfire of three armies, says Rojas.

They flee because their lives are threatened or because their land is forcibly taken. Some people stay on their land, but are coerced by rebels into farming illegal crops. When the government undertakes coca eradication schemes they have to leave, says Burniske.             

Displacement in Colombia is different from other civil conflicts in the world because no camps have been set up to house the fleeing civilians. Instead, they resettle on their own, usually in the slums of urban areas, says Gustavo Valdivieso, who is stationed in Colombia as the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.  

They are poor from being forced to escape without any time to pack or sell belongings, so they “live in the places where nobody wants to live,” he says.

Because the displaced are not in centralized locations, it makes it more difficult to offer them humanitarian assistance. Most internally displaced persons, or IDPs, have agricultural backgrounds, meaning their skills are not appropriate to an urban setting, making it hard to find work, says Burniske.           

Solutions coming slowly

Andrea Lari, a senior advocate with Refugees International, published a report on Colombian IDPs in December 2007. He says the main problem is that the government simply has not prioritised displacement.   

In 2004, the government was ordered by the Colombian constitutional court to overhaul its policies, focusing more on the needs of IDPs and less on budgets, says Valdivieso.

“(Since then,) the budgets have increased in a very impressive way,” says Valdivieso. The government set aside about $50 million for IDPs in 2003, but that figure has jumped to $400 million today. Yet, some question how well the money is being spent.

The government began an IDP registry, handing out three-month subsidies for health care, education and housing, as well as giving them access to credit.   

Rincón worked for the government last year, taking statements from people who were applying for IDP status.

“Every single day, I had to hear the hardest stories I’ve ever known,” says Rincón.

But Lari says not all of the applicants are granted the IDP status. Only those who have been displaced by recognized rebel groups are granted help, meaning applications are denied if the applicant was pushed off their land by coca-eradication schemes by the government, or by smaller armed groups who have not yet gained notoriety.

Those who are accepted for funding sometimes do not receive assistance for months, says Valdivieso, and these registration schemes only take place in urban settings, where the civilians are fleeing to. What about where they’re fleeing from?  

Right now, the government makes its presence known in rural areas with military and police forces. Burniske says it is important that the state provides security, but there should also be more of an institutional presence in outlying areas.

“There needs to be government offices providing services to people and that institutional presence in itself will have a huge impact on the conflict, in terms of diminishing it,” he says. 

A Colombian boy in an urban garden for IDPs in Barranquilla. Courtesy of Mercy Corps.

Valdivieso says strengthening the civil presence of the state is very important. “That civil presence allows some government officials to report when there are situations of risk for communities that are not being taken care of,” he says.

Another possible solution that has been discussed is the legalization and taxation of cocaine. With illicit drugs no longer a source of funding for the rebels groups, some speculate that the conflict would become more manageable. But the Colombian government is so strongly backed by the staunchly anti-drug U.S. that this doesn’t seem like a viable option.

In the end, for each displaced person there are three possible conclusions: they can be integrated into cities, resettle on new land or try to return to their homes.

Burniske says the last option isn’t very likely. “I would say 80 per cent of IDPs have no intention of returning. The longer they’re displaced the less likely they are to go back to their communities.”

He says Mercy Corps runs programs to seek out the displaced and provide them with the counselling that they need to rebuild their lives in new settings. This includes psychological support to deal with trauma, helping them build a new life plan, and job training for work in urban centres.

He also says the solution to the conflict won’t be a military one. “It has to be a negotiated solution with the armed actors and it has to provide development assistance in terms of overcoming some of these social and economic inequities that are at the roots of the conflict.”

Burniske says he sees no end to the conflict in sight, and Valdivieso and Rincón agree.    

“I can’t believe that when I’m sick of blood and death, some of the Colombian people want more of it,” says Rincón. “They say, ‘Destroy the enemy,’ but I’m not really sure who is the enemy. Guerillas, paramilitaries, government, drug dealers, or just the evil inside people.”