Colombia’s Internally Displaced: Out of Tercer Milenio Park, Problems Remain

A few weeks ago, I wrote a commentary for the Americas Quartetly Blog about a recent settlement between the Colombian government and leaders of a group of Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs) who had been squatting for over four months in a park in Bogota.

1) Indigenous groups, 2) IDPs, and 3) human rights organizations have accused the Uribe administration of neglecting their needs and not fulfilling promises for advancement. The first two occasionally overlap and there are organizations belonging to the third that work with both groups.

The most recent spat is a 40 kilometer (25 mile) march planned by 10,000 indigenous people living in Valle del Cauca to the department’s largest city, Cali, to protest the government’s failure to live up to the a series of agreements signed in 2008 that guaranteed indigenous groups more rights and power. The march, which organizers hope will attract up to 30,000 people, is expected to culminate in Cali on 16 October 2009.

The entire post can be found here.

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