By IPS Correspondents
BOGOTA, Jan 6 2004 (IPS)

The latest statistics released by a local human rights group in Colombia indicate that the number of people fleeing the armed conflict in this country to take refuge in neighbouring Ecuador has risen 36-fold since 2000.

A total of 15,000 people fled Colombia between January and September 2003 to escape the violence of the guerrillas, paramilitaries and drug traffickers involved in Colombia’s four-decade civil war, crossing the borders into Ecuador, Venezuela and Panama, according to the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES).

The statistics published by CODHES in its report on forced displacement in Colombia in 2003 show that 8,000 Colombians applied for asylum this year in Ecuador alone.

But the number of refugees pales in comparison to the total number of internally displaced, which soared from 1.5 to three million over the past decade, according to CODHES and other sources.

In 2003, forced displacement in border areas and the flow of refugees into nearby countries ”was a major issue on Colombia’s foreign relations agenda, but unfortunately the interest focused on militarisation in response to the phenomenon, rather than on strengthening preventive and protective measures,” Moisés Medrano, in charge of displacement issues in CODHES, told IPS.

The CODHES report underlines that precise statistics are unavailable on the number of Colombians living abroad as refugees. Nor is there detailed information on how refugees are treated.

On that occasion, the people’s defenders of Colombia and Panama issued a joint report saying that the Panamanian state had violated the international standards governing protection for refugees and the non-separation of families.

In Darién ”there is a very strong cocktail of violence,” a source with a human rights group that helps those who have been sent home from Panama told IPS.

That is due to the presence of ”right-wing paramilitary groups disputing control over the territory with leftist guerrillas, as well as the presence of drug traffickers, arms-smugglers and economic groups interested in the implementation of mega-projects,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Another area that is a major source of refugees is northeastern Colombia on the border with Venezuela, which according to the source is a hotbed of ”systematic human rights violations and infractions of international humanitarian law.”

The 2,219-km border separating the Colombian region of Catatumbo from Venezuela is one of the epicentres of the spraying of illegal drug crops and the fight between insurgents and paramilitaries.

CODHES reported that in the first half of 2003 alone, 5,815 people were displaced in the area, and 6,734 hectares of coca – the raw material used to make cocaine – were sprayed.

The fumigation of illegal crops, one of the central elements of the heavily U.S.-financed Plan Colombia anti-drugs and counterinsurgency strategy, is reputedly aimed at fighting ”narcoterrorists” – insurgents or paramilitaries with ties to the drug trade.

But it also affects the civilian population, which is forced to abandon fumigated areas due to health and safety concerns.

Of Colombia’s neighbours, Ecuador is the country where refugees have received the best treatment. However, around 30,000 Colombians in that country are undocumented and have not been assigned the status of asylum-seeker or refugee, which would allow them to regulate their situation there.

CODHES reports that Ecuador has felt the continuous impact of Colombia’s armed conflict with the arrival of refugees seeking to escape the sociopolitical violence or spraying of drug crops in the southern region of Putumayo.

The largest numbers of Colombians are found in Quito and Guayaquil, Ecuador’s two biggest cities; in Ibarra, Nueva Loja (also known as Lago Agrio), Tulcán, Esmeraldas and Santo Domingo in the north; and in Cuenca in the southern part of the country.

In Venezuela, meanwhile, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) office for the Andean region and Panama launched a project this year aimed at drawing up a profile of the victims of Colombia’s armed conflict who have fled across the border into that country.

In August, Venezuela set up a National Commission of Refugees, and signed a ”memorandum of understanding” with Colombia on the treatment of displaced people who cross into Venezuela.

The document focuses on the temporary protection and repatriation of displaced persons, and although it acknowledges the existence of a humanitarian crisis, it does not recognise the displaced as refugees or asylum-seekers, despite the fact that the internally displaced fall into those categories once they have crossed an international border.

Under international treaties, refugee status entitles people to certain rights and protection measures.

The Colombian government has also signed accords on the displaced with Panama and Ecuador.

But human rights activists say the Uribe administration must face up to the challenge of designing policies that not only make it unnecessary for the displaced to flee to other countries, but provide safeguards allowing them to return to their farms and villages.

The latest CODHES statistics point to a reduction in the number of people displaced from their homes: from 353,000 between January and September 2002 to 175,000 in the same period in 2003.

The drop can be partly explained by the fact that many of the displaced refrain from registering, despite the benefits to which the official status of displaced could entitle them.

Many prefer instead to blend into the civilian population in the slums surrounding Colombia’s big cities, due to their fear of becoming objects of reprisals or discrimination, the frequent fate of displaced persons, said the human rights group.

But in some areas, the pressure has also diminished since December 2002, when the paramilitaries declared a unilateral ceasefire that they have partially lived up to, prior to reaching a demobilisation agreement with the right-wing government of Alvaro Uribe.

Under the accord, some 1,000 combatants disbanded in December.

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