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04/07/2006:
"Colombia suffers highest level of armed violence"
Colombia suffers one of the highest levels of armed violence in the world, although there has been a significant improvement since 2002, according to a joint report by the Conflict Analysis Resource Center and the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey.Between 1979 and 2005 more than 475,000 people were killed by the use of firearms through crime, organised and petty, and the ongoing conflict between the government and guerrilla groups. Most victims have been young men.
The report concentrates on measuring the impact of armed violence on human security. It also describes the production, trade, use, and trafficking of arms in Colombia and the regulatory framework in the country.
news.ft.com
Colombia Tops List of Land Mine Victims
...According to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, Colombia had the third-highest number of land mine victims in 2004 after Cambodia and Afghanistan. The count was incomplete for 2005.
The Colombian government's Land Mines Observatory recorded 1,070 land mine victims in Colombia in 2005 and said the number was more than in any other country. One quarter of these incidents resulted in deaths.
Land mines are perhaps the perfect embodiment of Colombia's civil war, a mechanism designed to kill and maim that draws no distinction between armed combatant and innocent civilian.
The majority of the victims are soldiers, many of whom are slowly trudging their way through heavily mined leftist strongholds in southern Colombia in the country's biggest offensive against the rebels. But a full quarter of those injured or killed, according to government figures, are civilians caught in the middle of the violence.
Colombia: Drug Wars Force Forest Nomads To Flee
150 Indians belonging to one of the last nomadic tribes in the Amazon have been forced to flee their land after becoming caught up in Colombia's drugs war.
Large numbers of left-wing guerrillas have taken over the Indians' territory, and are engaged in fighting with the Colombian army and right-wing paramilitaries. All sides are seeking to control the lucrative drugs trade which thrives in this remote region.
The Indians belong to the Nukak-Makú tribe, who live in the eastern Colombian Amazon. The tribe first made contact with white people in 1988. Around half the tribe have died since then from diseases such as flu and measles, leaving a population of about 500. In 1997 a Survival campaign succeeded in gaining legal protection of the Indians' territory on paper.
Until recently most of the Nukak were trying to continue their nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life in the face of waves of violence against them and the colonisation of their lands by poor Colombians growing coca. However, the scale of the fighting now taking place has made their life in the forest impossible, and the very survival of the tribe is now at risk.
