<<previous  |  index  |  next>>

IV. Registration and Humanitarian Assistance

S.B. and his wife arrived in Bogotá in July 2004 and made their way to the Social Solidarity Network, the government umbrella agency that coordinates humanitarian assistance for displaced persons.  “We got to the network [office] at 7 a.m.,” S.B. reported.  “At 5 p.m. they sent us here,” he said, referring to a shelter run by a community group.  “We’d spent practically the whole day there, without breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and without going to the bathroom.  At night, we had to sleep on the floor.  They didn’t give us anything.  They didn’t resolve anything,” he told our researcher.  They returned to the office the following day to make their declaration and complete the registration process.  Fifteen days after they reported to the network, he said, “We haven’t received anything yet. . . .  They haven’t even given us rice or a mattress.”¹⁰⁷

As frustrating as their situation was, S.B. and his wife did not experience the delays in registration that were common two or three years ago and still occur in some cases.  When A.B., an adult male from Caldes, arrived in Bogotá in 2003, he told us, “I had to wait in line two or three days, sleeping in the street, just to get in to see them [the Social Solidarity Network].  At 5 a.m., there were already 500 people in line. . . .  Three days sleeping in the streets, with children, with the whole family, . . . one gets fed up with that.”¹⁰⁸  His account was not unusual; Human Rights Watch spoke to at least half a dozen other families who reported similar experiences in registering between 2001 and 2003.¹⁰⁹

Some families who arrived in Bogotá in 2005 described similar experiences.  A.R. moved to Ciudad Bolívar from Cundinamarca in May 2005 with fifteen members of her family after paramilitaries threatened them.  She went to the Social Solidarity Network’s office  in Bogotá at 4 a.m. to wait in line to make a declaration.  “They were only letting in ten people at a time,” she said.  She waited in line two days just to be seen, she told Human Rights Watch.¹¹⁰

In the last several years, the Social Solidarity Network has made efforts to streamline the registration process.  ‘Three years ago, they gave appointments for the declaration,” said Adriana León, an official with the Network.  “But there have been many improvements in this area.  Now the declaration is taken immediately, or people are given an appointment at the latest for the next day.”¹¹¹  Teresa Díaz, a member of a displaced community organization and herself a displaced person, generally agreed with this assessment.  “Now things have gotten better,” she said.  “It seems they have improved the [Social Solidarity Network’s] responsiveness.”¹¹²

In particular, the government has made an effort to establish unified offices that combine Colombia’s bewildering array of social service agencies under one roof.  Known as Attention and Orientation Units (Unidades de Atención y Orientación, UAOs), these offices are intended to allow for greater coordination among the agencies that have a role in addressing the needs of displaced persons.  We visited one such office in Soacha, a municipality just outside the city limits of Bogotá that receives a significant number of displaced persons.  As a result of the effort to establish such offices, an official with the International Organization for Migration told us, “There aren’t the enormous lines that there were before.”¹¹³  Even so, government agencies may by law take up to fifteen business days to complete the registration process.¹¹⁴

Registration is critical because it is the key to obtaining humanitarian assistance, health care, and other services offered to displaced persons.  But it does nothing to address the immediate needs of displaced persons unless it is accompanied by emergency assistance.  Under Colombian law, displaced families are eligible for three months of humanitarian assistance, but only after the registration process is completed.¹¹⁵  This aid may be extended for another three months in cases of extreme need.¹¹⁶

It is not clear that displaced families are able to receive any assistance to help with their immediate needs before the registration process is completed.  In an August 2004 interview, Adriana León, an official with the Social Solidarity Network, told Human Rights Watch that in addition to ordinary humanitarian assistance, displaced families with immediate needs could receive emergency assistance as soon as they presented themselves at the Social Solidarity Network’s offices to make their declaration.¹¹⁷  In theory, this possibility would mitigate one of the consequences of the fifteen-day waiting period—that families in dire need will wait two weeks or more before receiving any help with food, shelter, or clothing.

But in September 2005, Ms. León told our researcher that the Social Solidarity Network does not provide emergency assistance before the declaration is processed and registration completed.  “We would get a lot of non-displaced people coming in for assistance” if the Network provided such aid, she explained.  Instead of emergency assistance, she told us that the Network would immediately process the declaration.  When our researcher pointed out that the failure to provide emergency aid would mean that many families would not get assistance for fifteen business days or longer, she replied that the national average for processing declarations was less than ten business days.  She left the room to double-check that figure with a colleague and said on her return, “The average was 9.24 business days in August [2005], or twenty-three calendar days.”¹¹⁸

The failure to provide emergency aid means that people get no government assistance in the hours and days immediately after their displacement and that most will see nothing until two weeks or more after they have made it to a government office to file a declaration.  “During those fifteen days, people remain without any assistance,” said Camila Moreno, then the head of the Displacement Section in the ombudsman’s office.¹¹⁹  Juan Carlos Monge, an official in the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, suggested that some families still experienced lengthy delays in registration, which in turn meant delays in receiving humanitarian aid.  “They can’t get humanitarian assistance until they receive certification of their situation as displaced persons,” he said.  “There are people waiting three, four, even six months before they receive anything.”¹²⁰

In addition, we heard that displaced families experienced problems in receiving humanitarian aid even after they have completed the registration process.  In August 2004, for example, some of the Social Solidarity Network’s offices were giving families a date to return to get humanitarian assistance, Teresa Díaz told us.  “The date is for two months ahead.  Sometimes the date comes, and they give you another date.  There was a gentlemen who went to make the declaration six months ago [in February 2004] who was given a date for September 6,” she said.¹²¹

In September 2005, we heard of several cases of families who had not yet received assistance even though they had made declarations with the Social Solidarity Network two or three months before.  For instance, A.R. told us that she and fifteen others in her family arrived in Ciudad Bolívar in May 2005 and made a declaration in early June.  “They told us we would hear back within fifteen days of making the declaration,” she said.  “We haven’t received any response.  We haven’t gotten any help from the Network.”¹²²

In fact, a December 2004 UNHCR study found that only around half of the families registered over a two-year period received humanitarian assistance.  “Access to emergency assistance is still limited,” UNHCR found.  “Between August 2002 and August 2004 only 50 percent of the population registered during that time were attended to.”  Persons involved in large-scale displacement—that is, groups of ten families or more—were far more frequently the recipient of such aid than those who had been displaced individually, the agency noted.¹²³

As a result, displaced persons routinely seek court orders directing government agencies to provide them with assistance.  These cases, known as tutelas, are so commonplace that they have become virtually a part of the process of applying for government assistance, Colombia’s constitutional court noted in an influential January 2004 decision.¹²⁴  But many displaced persons are not in a position to bring a court case in order to get humanitarian assistance, nor should they have to do so. “I can’t wait for a tutela,” L.D. told Human Rights Watch.  “While I wait for a tutela, my daughter will have gone three or four months without food.  There are days that we’ve eaten nothing but flour.”¹²⁵

If displaced families are successful in receiving humanitarian assistance, the three-month limit in all but exceptional cases means that they are unlikely to have put their lives on stable footing before assistance runs out.  As the Constitutional Court observed:

The design of the emergency humanitarian assistance, which places emphasis on temporal factors, turns out to be too rigid to meet the needs of the displaced population effectively.  The time limit of three months does not correspond to the reality of the continued violation of their rights, in that the continuation of this assistance does not depend on objective conditions of the population’s necessity but rather on the simple passage of time.¹²⁶

In some cases, families have not registered because they have been attending to their immediate needs or did not know how to complete the process.  “We’ve been looking for work.  We haven’t had time to go.  We don’t know how to make the declaration,” said K.L., who arrived from Tolima with her husband and two-year-old daughter in June 2005.  “We would like to do it in the future.”¹²⁷

A final complication, one that is more difficult to address, are the reports we heard that some displaced persons did not register out of fear that harm would come to them if they provided their addresses and other identifying information to officials.  “No,” E.P. said, “I didn’t go.  I didn’t go out of fear.  I was afraid of what might happen, that I might be killed, even.”¹²⁸  “There’s a lack of trust in institutions; therefore, people don’t always register,” one humanitarian official told Human Rights Watch.  “They are completely unprotected by state institutions.”¹²⁹  A June 2005 field report from Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) explained in more detail:

MSF has also found that some of the people who know about the [health] benefits available to them fear providing information on their own whereabouts.  In order for an internally displaced person to qualify for benefits the government requires the confirmation of a person’s identity both with the municipality of current residence and with the area from which they have fled.

For those who have escaped persecution in former homes . . . authorizing the government to conduct a process of verification raises serious concerns.  If the details of a person’s whereabouts were to fall into the wrong hands, it might endanger them.  Thus, free preventive health care eludes thousands of displaced people who are wary of compromising their whereabouts to access medical treatment.¹³⁰

OCHA’s Inter-Agency Internal Displacement Division received similar reports during its January 2005 mission to Colombia.¹³¹

The Cost of Humanitarian Assistance

Providing all internally displaced families with humanitarian aid and other needed services, such as access to education and health services, would be costly.  The Office of the General Comptroller of the Republic (Contraloría General de la República) estimates that the cost per person per year is in excess of 13 million pesos (about U.S.$5,600) and notes that the various Colombian government agencies responsible for implementing Law 387 spent over 436,500 pesos, about U.S.$175 million, between 2000 and 2003.  Full coverage would require spending eight times as much, the office estimated.  Even so, it found that actual expeditures for the years 2001 and 2002 were 32 percent less than the funds allocated for assistance to internally displaced persons.¹³²  If the same is true for the years going forward, these agencies have additional resources that they can draw upon to comply with the Constitutional Court’s 2004 decision (see below) and address the urgent needs of Colombia’s displaced population.

The United States provided more than U.S.$700 million to the government in 2004, mostly in military aid.  The U.S. Agency for International Development’s Reintegration Program for Displaced Families and Other Vulnerable Groups will provide some U.S.$33 million in FY 2005 and is expected to continue at least through FY 2008.¹³³  In October 2005, USAID entered into an agreement with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF) under which USAID will provide U.S.$100 million to fund a joint IOM/PADF project to provide assistance to internally displaced persons and other vulnerable groups over a five-year period, suggesting that the agency has decided to extend its displacement program at least until 2010.¹³⁴

Europe is now the largest donor to Colombia’s humanitarian, human rights, and peace programs.  Between 2000 and 2003, the Humanitarian Aid Department of the European Commission (ECHO) provided €33.9 million (U.S. $41.8 million) in support for emergency food and shelter assistance, a sum that was equivalent to 56 percent of the government Social Solidarity Network’s budget during the same period.  With other aid programs included, the European Union contributed a total of U.S.$52.5 million in humanitarian aid for displaced persons.  The European Union has pledged over €330 million (U.S.$410 million) in aid to Colombia in a package that ends in 2006.¹³⁵

International Standards and Colombian Law

The U.N. Guiding Principles establish that “[n]ational authorities have the primary duty and responsibility to provide protection and humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons within their jurisdiction.”¹³⁶  At a minimum, the principles provide that the state or other competent authorities should provide displaced persons with essential food and potable water, basic shelter and housing, appropriate clothing, and essential medical services and sanitation.¹³⁷  These Principles flow from the obligation to protect the survival of civilians, recognized in the Fourth Geneva Convention and in Protocols I and II of the Geneva Conventions, and the right to an adequate standard of living, articulated in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.¹³⁸  The Guiding Principles do not limit this assistance to a particular time frame; instead, they “identify rights and guarantees relevant to . . . protection and assistance during displacement,” as well as protection from displacement and protection during return, resettlement, and reintegration.¹³⁹

Colombia’s Law 387 sets forth the process that displaced persons must follow to register and receive humanitarian assistance.  As the first step, displaced persons must make a declaration before one of a number of government officials—the attorney general’s office (Procuraduría General de la Nación), the office of the ombudsman (Defensoría del Pueblo), or municipal or district personerías and then present a copy to the Social Solidarity Network for registration.¹⁴⁰  Those who make a declaration within one year of the events leading to their displacement are eligible for emergency humanitarian assistance.¹⁴¹  After the Network receives the declaration, it has fifteen business days to verify the facts alleged.¹⁴²  The Network will not register an individual if the allegations he or she has made are found to be untrue, if they do not amount to displacement as defined in Law 387, or if the declaration is made more than one year after the events giving rise to displacement have taken place.¹⁴³  (Declarations made after one year only allow access to state programs providing support for return, reestablishment, or relocation, subject to the availability of funds.¹⁴⁴)  If the declaration is verified and the individual is registered, he or she is notified of the fact of registration.¹⁴⁵  Once registered, displaced persons are eligible for humanitarian assistance for three months.¹⁴⁶  The law allows for the possibility of extension of humanitarian assistance for another three months, but only if (1) a member of the household has a physical or mental disability certified by a doctor, and then only if the condition was set forth in the original declaration; (2) the head of the household is a woman or is over sixty-five, and then only if that fact is set forth in the declaration; (3) the case involves a terminal illness that has been medically certified; or (4) in the Social Solidarity Network’s judgment, there exists a situation similar to those set forth above.¹⁴⁷  The Social Solidarity Network may exclude an individual from the registry if it finds a “lack of cooperation” or “repeated refusal by the displaced person to participate in programs and events” offered by the Social Solidarity Network.¹⁴⁸

In January 2004, as noted above, the Colombian Constitutional Court declared that the “repeated failure to provide [displaced persons] with opportune and effective protection on the part of the various [government] authorities charged with their care” amounted to a “state of unconstitutional affairs” (estado de cosas inconstitucional).¹⁴⁹  The court ordered the state to take remedial measures, among other things, by reforming its policies for addressing internal displacement and by assigning adequate resources to the maximum of their availability.¹⁵⁰