Colombia has the world's second largest population of internally displaced persons (five million) due to the half-century internal armed conflict—the longest-running war in the Western Hemisphere (since 1964). Control for territory and popular support among the three main groups (left-wing rebel forces FARC & ELN, right-wing paramilitaries, Colombian police/military) has left 220,000 killed, 75% of them non-combatants. Since 2000, the US has exacerbated the violence by sending more than $9 billion in mostly military assistance. Colombia, which has both Pacific and Atlantic coastlines, holds strategic interest for the US for global trade and military posturing.
U.S. civil society organizations from different sectors released a statement during the high-level dialogue between the U.S. and Colombian governments to demand a serious police reform in Colombia and to stop supporting the Colombian police until that is achieved.
In Colombia, the signing of peace with the defunct FARC guerrilla five years ago caused a profound transition to which the military has not been able to adapt with the required speed, and the National Police has not been able to respond to the challenge in 2021, which represented the wave of protests against the government of President Iván Duque, an unprecedented social outbreak. The country is heading to close the year with the highest homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants since 2014, according to data from the Defense Ministry itself. And in the midst of that crisis that multiple indicators show, a succession of scandals has cracked the image of the uniformed.
This year kicked off with a violent start on the Colombia-Venezuela border, where dissident militant factions have been competing for territorial control of lucrative drug routes that connect the South American country to the US and Europe. The renewed violence comes more than five years after the Colombian government signed a peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), ending a 52-year armed conflict that killed up to 220,000 people and displaced as many as 5 million people. Colombian President Ivan Duque vowed to stamp out the violence during his presidency. But it continues to plague rural areas, where peace was supposed to bring development and new opportunities -- mounting concerns that the country's most violent days might not be over. Here's what you need to know about the simmering conflict on Colombia's border with Venezuela.
Fighting between rival guerrilla groups along Colombia’s border with Venezuela has ushered in a bloody start to the new year, leaving dozens dead and sending residents fleeing from some of the worst violence since the country’s historic peace accords five years ago. At least 23 people were killed in clashes between leftist armed groups in the northeastern department of Arauca during the first weekend of January. Later in the month, car bomb exploded in front of a building where more than 40 social leaders were gathered in a self-protection workshop, injuring dozens and killing a security guard.
For nearly 30 years, the town of El Carmen de Bolivar and the surrounding region of Montes de María were infamous for violence perpetrated against LGBTQ+ individuals, targeted at one time or another over the country’s long civil war by rightwing paramilitaries, leftwing guerrillas, government soldiers and the police. In 1999, Helicopters were dropping pamphlets with a warning to the LGBTQ+ society to leave town. Now, Many of those who left are returning as their home has become much safer. “It gives me a lot of joy to see how we have been able to achieve so much in a place that people thought was impossible," Tito, leader of a folk dance group, says.
A new study shows the impact the warmer climate will have on cultivating coffee, avocados and cashews, and on the farmers doing so. Of the three crops, coffee will be hit hardest by warming: The study model foresees an overall decline by 2050 in the number of regions where it could grow. For cashews and avocados, results were more complicated. Certain growing regions would experience declines in those crops while others, such as the southern United States, would likely find more land better suited to tropical food crops like cashews and avocados. By predicting decades in advance how agriculture will change, scientists can help farmers know what to expect, and can advise policy makers on how to encourage farmers to use more efficient growing methods like cover crops to prevent erosion or planting new crops when needed.
Rights groups and politicians in Colombia have welcomed a decision by the country’s Constitutional Court, which ruled this week that the government failed to consult local communities over its plan to restart aerial fumigation of coca crops. Aerial spraying of glyphosate previously saw rural water supplies contaminated and food crops destroyed in the Colombian countryside. The court’s decision highlights the unfulfilled obligation the government had to engage with communities that would be affected by the spraying.
