Congress enacted Plan Colombia in 2000, with the stated objectives of strengthening democracy, promoting human rights and the rule of law, fostering socio-economic development, and reducing coca cultivation in Colombia. Lutheran World Relief, a faith-based international humanitarian agency, has been actively working with Colombian partner organizations for many years, especially in the predominantly Afro-Colombian and indigenous region of Choco. LWR has observed is that not only has Plan Colombia failed to meet its stated goals, but has, for the most vulnerable Colombians–mainly Afro-Colombian and indigenous peoples–grown considerably worse.

In Colombia, Lutheran World Relief (LWR) works with churches and humanitarian and community organizations to serve the immediate and long-term needs of internally displaced persons in areas heavily populated by Afro-Colombian and indigenous peoples. In response to the scale of Colombia’s crisis, LWR actively promotes a concerted effort by the international community to both rebuild sustainable communities and support a negotiated end to the conflict in Colombia as the most effective options for inclusion of traditionally marginalized groups.

Despite the fact that Colombia’s constitution recognizes the nation as multi-ethnic and culturally diverse, government policies historically exclude Afro-Colombian and indigenous people.

Afro-Colombian and indigenous people comprise about 27 percent of the overall population of Colombia (25 % and 2%, respectively). Yet they are overrepresented among the poorest of the poor. Roughly four out of five members of these minority groups lack basic public services. For example, the administrative district (departamento) of Choco, which has the highest percentage of Afro-Colombian residents, has the lowest per capita level of social investment and is ranked last nationally in terms of education, health, and infrastructure.

Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities have been disproportionately impacted by the Colombian armed conflict and drug trafficking.

Afro-Colombian and indigenous people are caught in the crossfire of Colombia’s lengthy conflict and war on drugs, as paramilitaries and guerrillas struggle for control of key drug and weapons-smuggling corridors. The most brutal massacres committed by paramilitaries and FARC and ELN guerrillas have happened in Afro-Colombian and indigenous areas. The ongoing violence has created over 2 million internally displaced persons (IDPs). According to the UNHCR, 22 percent of them were indigenous or Afro-Colombians. Aerial fumigation of ethnic territories is also adding to the crisis of these communities. This fumigation of coca and opiate crops has been implemented without alternative projects in place, thus ruining food crops and threatening the health and environment of Afro-Colombians as well as their animals and livestock, especially in the department of Choco.

The regional focus of Plan Colombia (primarily in the south) created a ‘balloon effect’ that has impacted indigenous and Afro-Colombian rural communities.

30 percent of Colombia’s territory belongs collectively to Afro-Colombian and indigenous rural communities. While laws grant indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities the rights to their ancestral lands in perpetuity through special legal protections and government programs, Afro-Colombian and indigenous people continue to lose their land to armed groups involved in drug trafficking and even to legal activities like the cultivation of palm oil. In addition, pressures resulting from Plan Colombia on the department of Putumayo shifted coca crops further west and north into Afro-Colombian and indigenous territories. For example, in 2000, only two municipalities in the Choco registered some sort of coca crop; today it is present in all 31 municipalities in Choco. This situation is destroying the traditional cultures of Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities.

Lutheran World Relief urges the U.S. Congress to transfer substantial funding for Colombia into programs for alternative development, humanitarian assistance for internally displaced persons, and peace-building in the Andean Counterdrug Initiative section of the FY2006 foreign operations appropriations bill. Funding should address the real needs of Afro-Colombian and rural indigenous communities.

In addition to funding, the United States should promote the following:

• Inclusion of historically excluded indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities in the design and implementation of rural development policies.
• Strengthening of communities’ capacity to administer their own territories.
• Stronger support for training of Afro-Colombian and indigenous local governmental authorities and nongovernmental leaders.
• Promotion of, and funding for, the Colombian Institute of Rural Development (INCODER) and Afro-Colombian and indigenous authorities and organizations to complete the land titling processes.

June 2005

Lutheran World Relief works with U.S. and Colombia-based organizations, including community groups and faith-based humanitarian organizations, to seek a true and lasting peace for Colombia. With partners in 50 countries worldwide, we help people grow food, improve health, strengthen communities, end conflict, build livelihoods, and recover from disaster. LWR is supported by Lutheran church members and others across the U.S.