More than 1,200 Colombians from indigenous communities recently fled their ancestral homelands near the border with Panama because of heavy fighting between left-wing and right-wing forces, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said today.
Voicing dismay at continuing human rights abuses by guerrillas and paramilitary groups in Colombia, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan issued a statement today calling for the violations to end and for international humanitarian law to be respected.
A senior official from the United Nations emergency feeding agency voiced concern today over the plight of 2 million Colombians displaced by armed conflict, 80 per cent of them lacking access to food.
Against the backdrop of a 40-year conflict in Colombia, the country’s new anti-terrorism measures and the growing concentration of media ownership are hampering the work of journalists, a United Nations human rights expert said today.
