[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 115 (Wednesday, July 18, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1553-E1554]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  RECOGNIZING 2007 AS THE YEAR OF THE RIGHTS OF INTERNALLY DISPLACED 
                          PERSONS IN COLOMBIA

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                         HON. JAMES P. McGOVERN

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 11, 2007

  Mr. McGOVERN. Madam Speaker, last week the U.S. House of 
Representatives unanimously approved H. Res. 426, recognizing 2007 as 
the Year of the Rights of the Internally Displaced in Colombia. The 
United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Refugees, UNHCR, 
praised its passage, noting that ``It is the first time the U.S. 
Congress has singled out forced displacement in Colombia as one of the 
worst humanitarian crises on the American continent.''
  More than one-third of the over 3 million internally displaced people 
in Colombia are Afro-Colombians or indigenous peoples. On July 11, 
2007, the Association of Internally Displaced Afro-Colombians, AFRODES, 
issued a statement welcoming the action taken by the U.S. Congress in 
passing H. Res. 426 and bringing attention to the plight of Colombia's 
internally displaced.
  I encourage my House colleagues to reflect on the words of Colombia's 
Afro-Colombian community and I welcome the opportunity to submit the 
statement of AFRODES into the Record of the debate on H. Res. 426.

                            [July 11, 2007]

  Internal Displacement in Colombia and Its Impact in Afro-Colombian 
                      Territories and Communities

       In Colombia, a chronic and sustained humanitarian and human 
     rights crisis persists, due to the ongoing presence of the 
     causes of forced displacement, and the limited and 
     contradictory security policies that the national government 
     has adopted to stop the exodus of the population. Under the 
     government of President Alvaro Uribe, military confrontations 
     between the public security forces and illegal armed groups 
     have intensified; during President Uribe's first term, there 
     were 8,001 such confrontations, an increase of 149 percent 
     over the 3,211 which occurred during the previous government 
     of President Andres Pastrana. This shows there is a greater 
     military presence in the country, but that does not 
     necessarily imply that conditions for the security of the 
     civilian population are being met. In other words, there are 
     no guarantees for the security of internally displaced 
     communities to return to their regions of origin.
       Defining the dimensions of the problem of internal 
     displacement should be a priority, in order to define the 
     conditions faced by victims of the internal armed conflict 
     and thereby establish peace, justice and reparations. The 
     System of Information on Forced Displacement and Human Rights 
     (SISDHES), which has been operated by CODHES since 1995 and 
     which takes into account data from the Episcopal Conference 
     of Colombia from 1985-1994, indicates that around 3,832,527 
     people have been displaced during the last 20 years in 
     Colombia (from January 1, 1985 through June 30, 2006). The 
     United Nations just recently stated in a June 2007 report 
     that the number of internally displaced in Colombia has 
     reached 3,000,000. According to the U.N., out of the 13 
     million internally displaced persons (IDPs) their 
     organization attended to over the past year, three million--

[[Page E1554]]

     or 23 percent of the world total--are Colombian. This 
     according to the U.N. brings Colombia to the undesirable 
     first position of the greatest number of IDPs in the world. 
     Yet the Colombian government reports only 1,877,328 IDPs for 
     the period from January of 1995-June of 2005.
       Due to the lack of sufficient political will on the part of 
     the government to attend to the IDP population, the Colombian 
     Constitutional Court has delivered two rulings with the 
     purpose of protecting the rights of the internally displaced: 
     Ruling C-370 of 2005, relating to Law 975 of 2005, through 
     which the Constitutional Court defines the scope of the 
     rights and guarantees due to victims of the internal armed 
     conflict under the system of transitional justice.
       The Constitutional Court also issued Decree 218 of 2006, 
     following Ruling T-025 of 2004 which declared the state of 
     things to be unconstitutional in Colombia and ordered the 
     government to develop a public policy designed to guarantee 
     the effective protection of the rights of the internally 
     displaced.
       This decree examines the completion of the orders 
     established through decrees No. 176, 177 and 178 of 2005; its 
     principal conclusion is that the situation of 
     unconstitutionality has yet to be overcome, while the 
     necessary measures are not being taken to do so.
       Finally, the Civil Commission for the Evaluation if 
     Completion if Ruling T-025 and the Public Policy if Forced 
     Displacement was formed as a plural and diverse coalition of 
     civil society dedicated to overcoming displacement, at the 
     same time that new protests and proposals for strengthening 
     organizations of the internally displaced are being formed by 
     the affected population.
       Decree 218 illustrates the structural problems with the 
     lack of a public policy for forced displacement and opens the 
     possibility for greater public debate to examine the report 
     presented by the government on September 13, 2006, such as 
     the use of rights-based progress indicators.
       We would also like to applaud the 42 co-sponsors of H. Res. 
     426 and in particular our Afrodescendant brother Donald Payne 
     and humanitarian James McGovern for raising the visibility of 
     the plight of the many internally displaced Afro-Colombians 
     to the U.S. Congress. In the last decade, especially during 
     the last 5 years, internal displacement has intensified in 
     areas of the Pacific Coast, in the departments of Narino, 
     Valle del Cauca, Cauca and Choco in the collectively titled 
     lands of Afro-Colombians. The particular characteristics of 
     these displacements show them to be planned and deliberate, 
     in order to cause communities to vacate their territories. 
     This is corroborated by the study carried out by AFRODES and 
     Global Rights in 2005, which illustrates that 61.73 percent 
     of those people with collective titles to land in 50 
     municipalities with Afro-Colombian populations have been 
     displaced from their territories. Most alarming is that there 
     currently exists no public policy for attention to Afro-
     Colombian displaced populations, while the humanitarian 
     crisis in their territories continues to worsen.
       Finally, as an organization of internally displaced persons 
     and in the name of many more who have lost their territories 
     in Colombia, we appreciate and commend the efforts undertaken 
     by the U.S. Congress and the international community to raise 
     visibility of this humanitarian tragedy, specifically through 
     H. Res. 426 in the U.S. House of Representatives. By working 
     in partnership with the United States, the United Nations and 
     many religious and non-governmental organizations, our 
     communities can once again live with dignity and respect for 
     their rights.

                          ____________________