“The world’s largest internal refugee crisis after Sudan”

Can you guess which country this statement refers to? Would you be surprised if you were told it was Colombia? Over the past 20 years it is estimated that 3 million people have been forced from their homes in Colombia mainly due to fighting between right-wing paramilitaries and left-wing guerrilla groups.
2007 has been declared the Year of the Rights of the Internally Displaced People in Colombia by the Colombian Catholic Church, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), and the Human Rights and Displacement Consultancy (CODHES). Part of the initiative is to collect a petition with one million signatures to send to the Colombian government.
According to CAFOD (Catholic Agency for Overseas Development) the majority of displaced people are women and young children, indigenous populations and Afro-Colombians. CAFOD state that, “there are many reasons why people abandon their homes – threats, massacres, selective killings, taking of hostages, recruitment of children by armed groups, as well as the ongoing fight for the control of the land”. Many people end up in shanty towns where healthcare and education are sparse. CAFOD suggest that, “the problem is getting worse – more than 15 million Colombians were forced to flee their homes in the first 100 days of 2007, the worst displacement in the last decade of the country’s armed conflict”.
The petition is online at the UNHCR website or you can find it at the following link: http://www.colsia.org.co/apoyo/index.php . It’s in Spanish, but it only asks for a few details to sign up: First name (Nombre); Surname (Appellidos); Email; City (Ciudad); and Country (Pais). Note that the “UK” in Spanish is “Reino Unido”. Click “enviar datos” to send.