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Armed groups fighting near the Colombia-Venezuela border have committed grave abuses against residents and displaced thousands.
Since mid-January, the National Liberation Army (ELN) has been carrying out a campaign to regain control of large parts of the Catatumbo region. The area is known as a location for drug production and trafficking.
The ELN, which for years has benefited from the complicity of Venezuelan security forces, is fighting against another armed group in Colombia called the 33rd Front. The 33rd Front emerged from the 2017 demobilization of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), as one of many FARC dissident groups.
For years, the ELN and the 33rd Front had shared control over large parts of the Catatumbo territory in a kind of “armed coexistence.”
All this broke down in January with the new fighting, which has brought misery and suffering to local residents.
A new HRW report details how the ELN have killed, assaulted, kidnapped, and disappeared civilians whom they accuse of having ties with the 33rd Front.
Witnesses we interviewed also detailed grave abuses by the 33rd Front, including recruiting children and forced labor.
The fighting and abuses by both sides have reportedly forced more than 56,000 people to flee their homes. It’s one of the largest mass displacements in Colombia for decades.
Where are Colombia’s authorities in all this?
When the fighting broke out in January, the Colombian government suspended peace talks with the ELN and declared a “state of emergency” in the Catatumbo region. The military used helicopters to evacuate more than 750 people at risk of ELN violence.
The government has also announced several new local development measures. This includes a program to give money to individual farmers who promise to replace their coca crops with food and other legal sources of income.
That sounds encouraging, but if recent history is any judge, it’s not without risks.
The Colombian government has long been having talks with the 33rd Front, and well before this year’s renewed fighting, the parties had agreed on a ceasefire and local development plans. The deal was the 33rd Front, the government, and local communities would carry out those plans.
However, as interviewees describe in the new report, civilians who helped on these local development initiatives were at high risk of ELN attacks.
The new development plans for the region need to avoid creating such perverse incentives.
More broadly, the government needs to urgently put in place a justice and security policy to protect residents from armed groups and re-establish the rule of law in Catatumbo. Otherwise, ordinary people will continue to be the ones to suffer.
