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COSTA RICA: Sanctuary for Colombian Refugees
By Daniel Zueras
SAN JOSÉ, Jun 19 (IPS) - People fleeing Colombia
receive protection and assistance in Costa Rica. But
integration is difficult, and the refugees continue
to face threats from paid killers sent from the
war-torn country they fled.
Costa Rica, a country of 4.1 million, has taken in
around 10,000 of Colombia's 500,000 refugees, said
Philippe Lavanchy, the Office of the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Americas
bureau director.
Nearly all of the 10,636 refugees under UNHCR
protection in this Central American country are from
Colombia.
"My main objective is to stress the importance of
the role Costa Rica has played in granting refuge to
people" displaced by internal armed conflicts, said
Lavanchy last week on a visit to this country in
preparation for the activities surrounding World
Refugee Day, which is celebrated Jun. 20.
Costa Rica has a strong tradition of providing
asylum. "Over 20 years ago, they took in a good
number of Salvadoran and Nicaraguan refugees, and
that tradition is still alive today," said Lavanchy.
One-third of the 30,000 Colombians living in Costa
Rica are refugees. The producer of the "Tierra
compartida" (Shared Land) radio programme, Henry
Rodríguez, is one of them.
The Colombian journalist has been living in Costa
Rica since 2000, when he was forced to leave his
country after covering the peace talks between the
government and guerrillas in the "demilitarised
zone" in San Vicente del Cagüán in the southern
Colombian province of Caquetá.
"I did not receive direct death threats like three
of my colleagues, but we received a string of very
strange telephone calls at my house, and we decided
to come to Costa Rica," he told IPS.
"Being a refugee generates problems of rejection
from the business community. It carries a stigma,"
added Rodríguez.
Another difficulty, said Lavanchy, is that "every
time a violent incident occurs, refugees or people
of certain nationalities are blamed."
"Tierra compartida", which went on the air on Jun.
16 with UNHCR support, will disseminate information
on the rights and responsibilities of refugees in
Costa Rica.
Colombia's four-decade armed conflict, in which the
army and far-right paramilitaries - which have
partially demobilised through negotiations with the
government - face off with leftwing guerrillas, has
led to the forced displacement of millions of
people, while hundreds of thousands have fled to
neighbouring countries.
That situation has given rise to the UNHCR's biggest
operation in the Americas.
Colombia has the third largest population of
internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the world,
after Sudan and Angola. The UNHCR estimates that
there are three million IDPs in Colombia, out of a
total population of 44 million.
The Consultancy on Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES),
a respected Colombian human rights group, put the
number somewhat higher, at nearly 3.7 million, in
October 2005.
Close to 1.8 million IDPs had registered with the
Colombian government as of April. However, many do
not do so for fear of reprisals from armed groups.
More than 130 Colombian and international
organisations, including the UNHCR, decided to
declare 2007 the Year of the Rights of Internally
Displaced Persons in Colombia.
The campaign is aimed at drawing attention to those
displaced by the armed conflict and promoting their
rights.
The U.N. agency says that while the United Nations,
local and international NGOs and the Colombian
government recognise the existence of the problem,
there are discrepancies as to the measures taken to
deal with it.
The UNHCR says the Colombian state's response has
focused on humanitarian aid rather than a lasting
solution, such as returning land stolen from the
displaced by paramilitary groups.
With respect to the refugees, Lavanchy underscored
the "positive" attitude taken by the government of
Costa Rica, where he said "they receive protection
and assistance."
However, to achieve true integration, it is
important to guarantee people's safety, he added.
"There are serious problems, not only in Costa Rica.
It's obvious that we cannot request one police
officer per refugee, but cases in which safety is
threatened must be given priority treatment," said
the UNHCR official, referring to Colombians who have
been murdered in this country, presumably by "sicarios"
(paid gunmen) who followed them here from Colombia.
The Costa Rican government is drawing up reforms of
the country's migration laws, which would strengthen
the confidentiality surrounding the paperwork
carried out by asylum-seekers and improve the safety
of refugees.
Lavanchy, who has spoken of the need to redistribute
Colombian refugees in the region, praised Brazil's
2004 proposal to set up a regional resettlement
programme for Latin American refugees. Brazil has
since accepted urgent Colombian refugee cases, and
Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay have also
joined the initiative.
Ecuador has felt the heaviest impact of Colombia's
refugee crisis, having received 250,000 Colombians,
while 200,000 have crossed into Venezuela. However,
in both cases the number of Colombians who have
actually sought or applied for formal refugee status
or asylum is much smaller.
The resettlement plan forms part of the Mexico Plan
of Action to Strengthen International Protection of
Refugees in Latin America, which was signed by more
than 20 Latin American countries in 2004.
The "Borders of Solidarity" and "Cities of
Solidarity" programmes are other aspects of the
plan. The former is implemented along Colombia's
borders with Venezuela and Ecuador, where special
projects for refugees are carried out and the local
population, which suffers the burden of the influx
of refugees, is provided with support.
The Argentine and Ecuadorian capitals, meanwhile,
are among the "Cities of Solidarity" where the
integration of vulnerable groups of refugees, like
women-headed families, is facilitated.
"In many cases, the support does not involve money,
but is a question of making it possible, through
legislation, for these people to lead normal lives,
to work, and to have access to schools and medical
services."
UNHCR representative in Costa Rica Jozef Merkx
emphasised family reunification initiatives. "We are
designing protocols, in conjunction with migration
authorities, and to do so we need the support of the
Costa Rican consulate in Colombia, for the issuing
of visas to family members," he explained.
The U.N. agency's office in Costa Rica granted 380
microcredits for a combined total of 250,000 dollars
"to both Costa Ricans and migrants, because what is
important is integration," said Merkx. |
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