UN Refugee Chief To Visit Colombia, Ecuador

UN Refugee Chief To Visit Colombia, Ecuador

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Guterres will pay a week-long visit next week to Ecuador and Colombia, the country with the largest population of concern to his agency, with some 3 million people uprooted by more than 40 years of fighting between the Government, leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries.

Mr. Guterres, making his first visit to the two countries since taking over as High Commissioner in 2005, will arrive on Monday in Quito, capital of Ecuador, which already hosts an estimated 250,000 Colombians in need of international protection.

Last year, an average of between 600 and 700 Colombians asked for asylum in Ecuador every month. Real numbers could be much higher as many do not register with the authorities, often because they do not know their rights.

“But the impact of this humanitarian crisis is little known in the rest of the world and more support is needed from the international community,” UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told a news briefing in Geneva today.

Mr. Guterres will hold a series of high-level meetings with government officials before travelling to the northern border with Colombia, where many refugees live in remote and often impoverished communities. He will visit these communities and talk with refugees and local people about the challenges they face.

From there he will go on to Colombia for meetings with high-ranking officials. Later in the week, he will visit Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities in the west of Colombia. Both ethnic minorities have suffered greatly as a result of the armed conflict in that part of the country.

During a conference in Bogota on Friday, Mr. Guterres will present the main findings of a UNHCR study of the changes in displacement trends and the Government’s response to the crisis in the past three years. He will also launch the 2007 ‘Year for the Rights of Displaced People Campaign’ to highlight and lobby for the rights of the displaced.

According to the Government, some 170,000 Colombians were forcibly displaced last year. The authorities have significantly stepped up their efforts but there is still a gap between sophisticated national laws and implementation in the field, especially but not only in rural areas. In practice, the displaced are not always able to enjoy their rights to material aid, long-term solutions and above all to a life free of violence and persecution.
The 2007 campaign aims to encourage the search for practical solutions.

UNHCR has three offices in Ecuador, two of them along the border, and 12 in Colombia, where it has been present since 1997.

ENDS

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