colombia children and armed conflict in the past

However, along with Afro-descendent communities and peasant farmers, many Indigenous communities are subject to forced displacement and dispossession from their lands due to a series of factors ranging from drug trafficking networks, struggles for control of land, the impact of mining, persecution, murders and poverty. 115 Indigenous Peoples and Afro-descendent communities are recognised as collective rights holders by the country’s Constitution. Their faces reveal the harsh lives they have already led at such a tender age.Īccording to a report by the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), Colombia’s Indigenous population is estimated at a 1.5 million inhabitants, or 3.4 per cent of the total population. Displaced from their lands, these children and their families arrive in the capital fleeing the violence of the conflict.

Dressed in their worn traditional clothing, they sit outside of bus stations, beg for change, cling to their mothers – their safest refuge – and play amongst themselves, oblivious to the apathy that surrounds them. In one of the most visible and disturbing signs of Colombia’s ongoing armed conflict, Indigenous children can be seen scattered throughout the cold streets of Bogotá, the country’s capital.

Colombia children and armed conflict in the past