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When Colombia’s conflict-displaced come to the capital

‘The government has made no shortage of promises. But we have learned not to put much faith in their offers.’

Clean up workers sweep in the proximity of the camp. Daniela Díaz/TNH
Clean-up workers sweep around a camp for Indigenous people who have been displaced by conflict, in the Colombian capital, Bogotá, in June 2024.

Just a few kilometres from President Gustavo Petro’s palace in downtown Bogotá, hundreds of mostly Emberá Indigenous people live in a makeshift tent community in one of the Colombian capital’s most iconic parks. 

Fire smoke wafts from shelters fashioned from tarps and from signs that once hung as large advertisements on nearby buildings. Children play barefooted alongside 7th Avenue, competing for noise with the traffic screeching down one of the city’s main arteries. 

Roughly 600 people, displaced by conflict from their rural homes in Chocó, Risaralda, and Antioquia – in central and western Colombia – now live here in the Parque Nacional, in the shadows of skyscrapers, begging or selling their artisanal jewellery to survive.

What sets them apart isn’t so much their forced displacement from their native regions, but their proximity to Petro, and to the seat of power of an administration that promised to prioritise their rural areas – wracked by violence and neglect for decades.

A peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2016 officially ended a 53-year civil war. There was hope then that the process would eventually end the other conflicts in the country as well. It has not. 

In fact, the last two years have seen the annual number of people internally displaced by conflict in Colombia soar above 250,000, surpassing even pre-2016 levels.

This rising displacement is due to threats or active fighting between the dozens of armed groups that stepped into the vacuum when FARC fighters disarmed en masse. 

Most victims of the conflict live in rural parts of Colombia, in areas that lack the investment and infrastructure that urban centres like Bogotá enjoy.

Too easily ignored in their native regions, the Emberá have become a symbol that politicians in the capital find harder to overlook – one that underlines the government’s unkept promises to invest in communities still suffering the effects of conflict. 

Jairo, an Indigenous leader who asked to be identified only by his first name, believes the lack of action by the government illustrates “systemic and structural discrimination” against Indigenous peoples that goes far beyond the current administration.

He demanded not just a return to their lands, but a restitution of land and economic opportunities guaranteed under Colombian law and under the 2016 peace accords. “The government has made no shortage of promises,” Jairo continued. “But we have learned not to put much faith in their offers.”

Three years of neglect in the capital

In September 2021, 15 Indigenous people from different parts of the country arrived in Parque Nacional – the first members of a forcibly displaced community that would grow more than thirtyfold over the next three years.

Children playing in the middle of an encampment at a park.
Daniela Díaz/TNH
Children play in the middle of the makeshift encampment in Bogotá’s Parque Nacional, in June 2024.

They spent the next eight months living in improvised shacks in the often cold and rainy capital. Most were Emberá-Katio and Emberá-Chamí women and children, but there were also people of the Nasa, Wayú, and Zenú ethnic groups.

As the community grew, they staged protests and demonstrations that were met with repression by the police. Their shelters were cleared by force.

After negotiations with then-mayor Claudia López and delegates from the government of then-president Iván Duque, they agreed to vacate the park and relocate to shelters provided by the city. 

However, as more and more desperate displaced people came to the capital, these shelters suffered from extreme overcrowding, lack of potable water, and insufficient basic services, leading to rancid food and poor sanitation.

The squalid conditions caused preventable diseases in both adults and children, and some deaths. Residents eventually broke their deal with the city and returned to the park.

According to figures from the Mayor's Office, there are now around 2,000 Emberá people in the capital, and all of them live in precarious conditions. The vast majority say they would like to return to their homelands.

An endless cycle of failed promises

As part of the 2016 peace deal, then-president Juan Manuel Santos promised to invest in infrastructure and economic opportunities in long-neglected communities  — many of which had turned to coca production and other illegal activities under FARC control.

But Duque, who took office in 2018 amid widespread dissatisfaction over the implementation of the accord, dismantled large aspects of the peace agreement, preferring military to social solutions as he pursued a more right-wing agenda.

“We demand a guarantee of our fundamental rights that all Colombians possess. We want the right to return to the areas we have been displaced from, but with guarantees for security and economic opportunity.”

Jairo, Indigenous leader

Petro came to power in 2022 on the back of campaign promises to not only fulfil the original agreement, but also to bring “Total Peace” to Colombia by striking new accords with the remaining armed groups. So far, however, he has made little progress.

As of mid-2023, the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, which tracks the implementation of peace promises made by the government, estimated that only one third of the investment programmes pledged had been implemented.

As these broken vows to invest in rebuilding economies and civil society have piled up, a host of existing and new armed groups have expanded into the political and economic voids in Colombia’s conflict regions.

“This is a failure not just of the current government, but also the previous one,” Francisco Javier Daza, an analyst for PARES, an NGO that provides research and analysis on Colombian conflict, told The New Humanitarian. “Forced displacement is an ongoing phenomenon for which the government has not provided sufficient preventative or protective measures.”

Petro’s peace strategy has focused on negotiations with criminal armed groups in return for their eventual disarmament. He has made some progress, such as a bilateral ceasefire with the largest remaining rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN). But violence in conflict areas has continued unabated, especially in regions like Chocó, which has one of the highest rates of forced displacement in the country. 

“In some regions, there is a notable increase in illicit economies, extortion, and armed subordination of individuals and organisations,” Indepaz noted in a recent statement.

The NGO, which monitors the implementation of peacebuilding measures in Colombia, also said that 81 social leaders have been killed in the country so far in 2024, the majority for speaking out against criminal armed groups or opposing their interests.

Six months after taking office, following a demonstration that ended in clashes with the police, Petro met with Indigenous leaders from the Parque Nacional camp at the presidential palace – the Palacio de Nariño – together with members of his cabinet and senior advisers.

After the Emberá highlighted the broken promises, the deaths of their children, and the inhumane conditions in which they lived, new agreements were reached and emergency measures adopted.

Initially, this seemed to work, and the president chose an Emberá woman, Patricia Tobón, to head the institution in charge of supporting the victims of the armed conflict. But any success was short-lived, and the meeting appears to have had no major long-term impact on the crisis.

More than a year has now passed. Conflict still rages in the Emberá homelands, and those in the capital are still not getting the assistance they need. According to the Mayor's Office, 24 Indigenous children under two years of age have died due to preventable conditions since the encampment was created.

“The conditions are bad, and have led to deaths,” said Jairo. “We demand a guarantee of our fundamental rights that all Colombians possess. We want the right to return to the areas we have been displaced from, but with guarantees for security and economic opportunity.”

Edited by Daniela Mohor and Andrew Gully.

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