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Hundreds more flee fighting in Colombia, UN refugee agency reports

Hundreds more flee fighting in Colombia, UN refugee agency reports

Afro-Colombians displaced by fighting
In yet another humanitarian crisis arising from Colombia’s four-decade-long civil turmoil, hundreds of people are fleeing heavy fighting between the army and one of the Andean country’s irregular armed groups in the south-western department of Nariño, the United Nations refugee agency reported today.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has rushed personnel to the town of Sanchez to help the municipality deal with the crisis, especially in terms of providing protection. Since the start of the year, more than 4,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in Nariño.

National social services and international organisations are now on the ground as well to supply emergency assistance, UNHCR said in a statement, the latest it has issued in recent weeks over the devastating effect of local communities of more than 40 years of fighting between Government forces, leftist rebels and rightist paramilitaries that has displaced 2 million Colombians.

Since last Friday, more than 1,400 people have left their homes in remote, mountainous settlements in northern Nariño to take refuge in the village of Sanchez, UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told a news briefing in Geneva. They say they fled because of air-to-ground fighting between army helicopters and members of an irregular armed group encamped in the mountains.

“The situation in Sanchez itself is now getting under control after a very difficult first few days when local authorities struggled to find shelter, food and drinking water for the newcomers,” he said.

The vast majority of the displaced - more than 90 per cent - are members of the Afro-Colombian ethnic minority. They come from remote settlements where there is little or no state presence and many of them do not have any identification documents – a situation that could jeopardise their rights to social services they are entitled to as displaced people.

As part of its national registration programme, UNHCR is planning to run an emergency documentation campaign in Sanchez next week.

The agency has several times in recent weeks voiced alarm for country’s 1 million indigenous people, warning that some communities are threatened with extinction as armed groups encroach upon their land, even torturing and killing their leaders.