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FEATURE: A Cycle of Displacement, Violence and Poverty LWF Empowers Communities in Colombia to Resist Armed Actors and Initiate Development Projects
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti/GENEVA, 18 July 2007 (LWI) - "In Colombia people suffer daily from acts of violence," says Dr Alois Moeller, representative of the El Salvador-based Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Department for World Service (DWS) regional program for Central America. "It is an extremely complicated situation, which unfortunately gets very little international attention."
In a recent interview with Lutheran World Information (LWI) about DWS work in Colombia, Moeller explained that for almost 50 years, Colombia has experienced an internal armed conflict between different actors - the guerrillas, paramilitary groups and the national army. The conflict, which was initially begun over the unequal distribution of land and income, gradually turning into a struggle for territorial control, has led to the loss of many civilian lives and a great wave of internal migration within Colombia.
Data from United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations working in the Central American country indicate it has the second-highest number (after Sudan) of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the world. According to the German organization for human resources development, training and dialogue, InWEnt, 60 percent of Colombia's 43.7 million people live below the poverty line.
Moeller spoke of the beginning of DWS work in Colombia. In 2001, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Colombia (IELCO) invited LWF/DWS to support their work among the IDPs. At the end of the same year, DWS started implementing four emergency projects in cooperation with Action by Churches Together (ACT) International, the Geneva-based alliance of churches responding to emergencies worldwide. The main areas of work were shelter, risk management, water and health. In 2004, IELCO expressed interest for an institutional long-term presence of DWS in Colombia, and after the approval by the DWS Standing Committee, the LWF office was opened in the capital Bogota in July 2006.
The office focuses on five main objectives - the empowerment of communities, human rights, peace alternatives, advocacy and emergencies. DWS Colombia is currently active in two regions of the vast country: Arauca, mainly inhabited by peasants, and Choco, the poorest region, with a population mainly composed of people of indigenous and Afro-Colombian origins. The LWF office works mainly through local partner organizations. One of their empowerment strategies is to strengthen communities, building up their ability to resist the armed actors and initiate their own development projects, for example in the area of agriculture.
"Farmers are induced by armed actors to grow coca or the African palm tree, which are easy to cultivate and have economic value. But when an armed group occupies a village, people soon run out of food," said Rudelmar Bueno de Faria, LWF/DWS program coordinator at the Geneva headquarters. Therefore DWS supports agricultural diversity and only organic products, he explained.
The LWF office in Colombia currently employs three persons, including the national coordinator Ms Doris Mateus PÃrez, who has worked in the human rights' area for 15 years, and whose family has experienced poverty, displacement and violence. She said motivation for her difficult job comes from her deep concern for justice and dignity for the Colombian people.
"Eight out of ten Colombians have been displaced, and ten out of 100 have emigrated," said Mateus, stressing the urgency of the situation. On a regular basis, she organizes workshops with local organizations, for example in Arauca. But her work is hindered by the military conflict. "We have a lot of plans but cannot always [accomplish] them. People often have difficultie s traveling because they are stopped by militia groups," she Mexico-based German journalist, Julia Heyde, interviewed the LWF Colombia staff during the DWS regional consultation on "Violence, Migration and Their Impact on Citizenship and Democracy" held 18-22 June in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
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(The LWF is a global communion of Christian churches in the Lutheran tradition. Founded in 1947 in Lund, Sweden, the LWF currently has 140 member churches in 78 countries all over the world, with a total membership of nearly 66.7 million. The LWF acts on behalf of its member churches in areas of common interest such as ecumenical and interfaith relations, theology, humanitarian assistance, human rights, communication, and the various aspects of mission and development work. Its secretariat is located in Geneva, Switzerland.)
[Lutheran World Information (LWI) is the LWF's information service. Unless specifically noted, material presented does not represent positions or opinions of the LWF or of its various units. Where the dateline of an article contains the notation (LWI), the material may be freely reproduced with acknowledgment.]
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