Colombia is the country with the highest number of internally displaced people in the world, according to figures released today by the Norweigan Refugee Council´s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
The IDMC estimates that between 4.9 and 5.5 millions Colombians are displaced with 230,000 people fleeing their home because of violence last year alone.
A total of close on 29 million people are displaced world-wide. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the highest number, with over 10 million having been forced to abandon their home and livelyhood, while Latin America is second with 5.8 million.
It is the fourth year running that Colombia tops the list, with the country making up almost the full number of those displaced throughout the entire continent.
Colombians have been displaced over the course of five decades of war, and by a series of actors, not just the FARC, the ELN, not just the paramilitaries and the Bacrim, but also by state actors and by political violence.
This report, however, does not include those who have been displaced by criminal and drug trafficking gangs.
Colombia Politics view
These victims of Colombia´s multi-layered war are not heard enough in Colombian politics. This figure should continue to shock and appall policy makers and the society itself. Especially so given, as President Santos accepts, violence associated with the criminal gangs is going up. What then is the real figure of those displaced (which should include those affected by this form of violence)?
Sadly the faces of these displaced can be seen everyday in the cities of the nation, forced in many cases to beg and search for homes in an environment often alien to their (in many cases rural) way of life.
Does this sit at tragic odds with President Santos´s mantra of a country, just, modern and secure?
Photo, El Espectador.