Global Overview 2015: People internally displaced by conflict and violence - The Americas

Figures and causes of displacement

As of the end of 2014, there were at least seven million IDPs in South America, Central America and Mexico, a 12 per cent increase on 2013. Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Peru all had displaced populations, but Colombia accounted for the bulk of the regional total. The country had 6,044,200 IDPs as of the end of year, representing 12 per cent of its overall population. The figure continues to rise in part because of new displacement, and in part because people displaced in previous years continue to be registered.

Mexico and Peru had at least 281,400 and 150,000 IDPs respectively, and between them El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras had 566,700, many of them displaced by organised crime and gang violence.

There were 137,200^[4] people newly displaced in Colombia in 2014, fewer than in 2013 though the figure is expected to rise as the victims' registry is updated. The country's decades-old conflict is the main cause of displacement, but spreading criminal violence has also forced people to flee their homes. A third of all incidents of armed violence reported in 2014 occurred in the Pacific coast departments of Chocoó, Valle del Cauca, Cauca and Narinño, which also accounted for more than half of the country's new IDPs. The departments' African-Colombian communities were particularly hard hit, accounting for 30 per cent of the total. Colombia's Pacific coast ports are conduits for both legal and illegal exports, and armed groups that have emerged since the demobilisation of the country's paramilitary apparatus – post-demobilisation armed groups continue to terrorise communities and cause displacement in these areas.

The country's largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC) and the smaller National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional) accounted for the largest proportion of new displacements during the year, followed by post-demobilisation armed groups.^[5] The traditional pattern of rural to urban displacement continued, but intra-urban displacement soared, particularly in Buenaventura, where 22,400 people were displaced within the city, Cúcuta, Quibdoó, Tumaco and Soacha.^[6]

In Mexico, 1,300 people newly displaced in Chiapas joined IDPs living in protracted displacement linked to the Zapatista uprising. The new displacements were caused by religious intolerance, continuing political violence against Zapatistas and resource extraction and development projects.^[7] Criminal violence displaced at least 9,000 people across ten states in 2014, including 23 mass events.

A survey in El Salvador revealed that as many as 288,900 people were displaced by criminal violence and threats in 2014.^[8] In Guatemala, drug trafficking organisations and gangs fighting for the control of territory to extract palm oil and smuggle merchandise across the country's northern border displaced at least 1,770 families between 2011 and 2014.^[9] Of them, 350 families, or around 1,400 people, fled their homes in 2014.^[10] There was no data available for new displacements in Honduras.

Violence perpetrated by state forces and NSAGs reached epidemic proportions in 2014 in Colombia, Mexico and Central America's Northern Triangle – El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.^[11] The five countries account for 19 of the 50 cities in the world with the highest homicide rates.^[12]

Displacement in Colombia is still driven by the armed conflict, which continues despite the ongoing peace process. There have been fewer hostilities between government forces and FARC, and peace negotiators reached a partial agreement on drug trafficking in 2014, but violence and insecurity are still rife. Widespread abuses, including the recruitment of minors, sexual violence, the deployment of anti-personnel mines, extortion and the targeting of human rights defenders and land restitution advocates have forced many people to the flee their homes. Forty-eight per cent of IDPs are aged between six and 26, and many continue to live in areas still affected by the conflict.

The main cause of displacement in Mexico and the Northern Triangle was criminal violence mostly related to drug trafficking and gang activity. NSAGs use violence in the pursuit of profit, territorial control over trafficking routes and to neutralise competing organisations, often in collaboration with the state.^[13] Post-demobilisation armed groups in Colombia; maras and other urban gangs in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras; and drug traffickers and other criminal groups in Mexico were responsible for thousands of civilian deaths and kidnappings, the terrorising of local populations, extortion rackets, threats and the corruption and intimidation of government officials, all of which led to displacement.

Forced dispossessions were most common in Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala. They were driven by both the legal and illegal extraction of resources in all three countries, including logging, the cultivation of coca, opium poppy, marijuana and crops for biofuels and palm oil. In Colombia, such activities have also complicated land rights issues in indigenous and African-Colombian areas and created obstacles to restitution. Vigilantes have contributed to increasing violence in Mexico and Guatemala as people take up arms to defend themselves.

Heavy-handed responses by state security forces continue in Mexico and the Northern Triangle. Crackdowns by military police in Honduras and joint military operations in Mexico have increased human rights violations, particularly extrajudicial executions, the targeted killing of women, forced disappearances, torture and arbitrary detentions. Twentytwo alleged criminals were shot dead in Tlatlaya in the state of Mexico in June,^[14] 43 trainee teachers were killed or disappeared in Guerrero state in September^[15] and at least 1,000 bodies were discovered in mass graves in Mexico and hundreds more in El Salvador during the year.^[16][17] The involvement of security forces and public officials in such abuses is well documented, but very few perpetrators have been brought to justice.^[18] Violations such as these perpetrated by State agents contribute to the climate of insecurity that leads people into displacement.

Gender-based violence (GBV), forced recruitment, political violence and religious intolerance are widespread in the region and continue to cause displacement. Unaccompanied girls aged between 12 and 17 have fled to the US from the Northern Triangle and Mexico as a result of rape, physical violence and the threat of human trafficking.^[19] Violence, insecurity and endemic poverty had driven 21,500 young people from the Northern Triangle and 18,800 from Mexico as of the end of 2013, of whom around 23 per cent were girls with international protection needs.^[20] In Colombia, post-demobilisation armed groups were responsible for most of the GBV cases Human Rights Watch reported in 2014.^[21]

Political activists, human rights advocates and journalists who expose officials' abuse of power, embezzlement and criminal activities have been killed, persecuted and repressed and have fled their homes in all five countries. Indigenous communities have also been persecuted and displaced from their ancestral homelands in Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala.^[22]

Since 2006, Mexico's "abuse-riddled war on drugs" has driven severe human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, disappearances, and torture by the military and police, and spiralling violence between competing criminal organisations, all of which has contributed or directly led to displacement. More than 90,000 people have been killed in what has been termed a "public security catastrophe",^[23] and there is good reason to believe that much of the displacement caused has not been documented. Aside from the 23 mass events recorded in 2014, many people are thought to flee in small numbers and find their own solutions, effectively making them invisible and the true scale of displacement hard to gauge.^[24]

Mexican authorities have failed to rein in corruption and impunity, prevent and punish an estimated 26,000 forced disappearances^[25] or protect journalists and human rights advocates. Eight journalists were killed in 2014, and 104 have been killed and 22 disappeared since 2000, making the country the sixth most dangerous in the world for the profession.^[26] In the more repressive states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Tamaulipas and Veracruz, such attacks have led to self-censorship, meaning that atrocities, abuses and displacement are under-reported, if they are reported at all.^[27]

Displacement patterns and protection issues

The mobility and fragmentation of drug trafficking and other criminal groups as a result of military operations against them, and their struggles to control territory mean that displacement patterns in Mexico are changeable and diverse. People have been displaced en masse and in trickles, whether from one urban area to another, as in Chihuahua, Tamaulipas and Veracruz; rural and semi-rural to suburban areas, as in Chiapas, Michoacán, Oaxaca and Sinaloa; suburban to urban areas, as in Michoacán and Sinaloa; urban to suburban areas, as in Veracruz; and intra-urban, as in Chalco, Nezahualcoóyotl, Matamoros, Tamaulipas and Mexico City.

In El Salvador and Guatemala, the sweeping political transitions that took place at the end of their civil wars have been followed by waves of crime and insecurity. Internal displacement and undocumented migration to the US are a di- rect consequence of structural problems that drive forced movements and prevent the achievement of durable solutions.

A substantial proportion of criminal violence in the Northern Triangle is attributed to the transnational Mara Salvatrucha criminal gang, which originated in Los Angeles, and Barrio 18 or Neighbourhood 18. Both are involved in streetlevel drug dealing and extortion rackets. The government in El Salvador agreed a truce with the two gangs in 2012, but it was effectively abandoned in 2014, leading to a rise in homicides, extortion and the recruitment of children.^[28] None of the countries in the Northern Triangle have published official data on displacement, but evidence suggests that families and young people regularly flee areas appropriated by criminal gangs such as these two to escape their excesses.^[29]

In Guatemala, military operations against criminal gangs continued in 2014 in the Pacific coast departments of Escuintla and Santa Rosa, and along the border with Honduras in Zacapa and Chiquimula. Maras are ubiquitous in many areas of Guatemala City and in the nearby municipalities of Villa Nueva and Mixco, where people live in a state of perpetual fear. As in Mexico, attacks and intimidation against human rights defenders and journalists, particularly those covering corruption and drugs trade, are common and go unpunished.^[30] An opinion poll carried out by Vanderbilt University found that between 2012 and 2014 the percentage of Guatemalans who felt the need to move because of their fear of crime had risen from 9.91 to 13.44 per cent.^[31]

In Honduras, nearly 65 per cent of the population live in poverty and the unemployment rate is 4.5 per cent.^[32] The city of San Pedro Sula has the highest homicide rate in the world, with 171 per 100,000 inhabitants. Homicides in the country more generally are concentrated in the larger cities and northern areas leading to the border with Guatemala, where drug trafficking routes are in dispute.^[33] Domestic and gang violence are rampant and have been reported as the main reasons for children and young people fleeing Honduras for the US.^[34] Those deported swell the ranks of gangs and other criminal groups, and the 6,000 children living on the streets to escape domestic violence are also easy prey for recruiters.^[35] The deployment of the military police to counter violence in 2014 had the opposite effect, increasing insecurity, abuses and corruption.^[36]

No new data on IDPs in Honduras was available for 2014, but areas previously identified as suffering displacement include the departments of Francisco Morazán, Cortes and El Paraíso.^[37] Displacements have taken place from suburban to urban areas, such as from Chamelocoón to Tegucigalpa, and from rural to suburban areas. Intra-urban displacement has occurred in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula.

In El Salvador, at least 91 families were reportedly displaced from La Paz, Sonsonate, Zacatecoluca, and Usulután. Mass displacements have been caused by fighting between gangs in San Salvador^[38] and by the struggle to control territory in Ciudad Delgado,^[39] but most IDPs in the country appear to flee in small numbers.^[40]

Durable solutions

In Colombia, IDPs who live in contested areas and those controlled by NSAGs are exposed to human rights abuses and live in dire circumstances, with inadequate housing, scarce employment opportunities and no access to public services.^[41] Displacement also drives people into poverty. More than 63 per cent of IDPs live below the poverty line, and 33 per cent live in extreme poverty.^[42]

Land restitution is becoming increasingly important and is a key element of the peace talks, but progress on the issue is slow. Threats against the leaders of those claiming restitution have been reported in 25 of the country's 32 departments, with 600 people affected since January 2012. Authorities have determined that more than 400 threatened claimants and leaders are at "extraordinary risk" because of their involvement in the issue.^[43]

In Mexico, 30,000 IDPs have been living in protracted displacement in Chiapas since the 1994 to 1995 Zapatista conflict, with no durable solutions in sight. The Chiapas state legislature enacted a law on IDPs in 2012, but no steps have been taken to implement it. Instead IDPs' rights have been ignored for two decades, with widespread injustice, discrimination, poverty, persecution and impunity preventing their return to their places of origin.^[44]

El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have only recently begun to acknowledge displacement and set responses in motion, and as such the pursuit of durable solutions is still virtually non-existent.

National and international response

Responses to displacement vary significantly across the region from Colombia, where the government and international agencies have been running programmes for many years, to the Northern Triangle where responses are barely underway. Colombia made significant progress at the judicial, legal and institutional level in 2014, implementing transitional justice mechanisms, and policies on durable solutions and demobilisation, disarmament and reintegration. Assistance programmes for IDPs also continued but had little impact, particularly in terms of access to employment.^[45] Colombia is a pilot country for the Transitional Solutions Initiative, a joint UNHCR, UNDP and World Bank project running in 17 communities,^[46] but it is too soon to assess results.

Mexico does not officially acknowledge internal displacement, and responses have been fragmentary and insufficient. The country enacted a federal victims' law in 2013, intended to ensure justice, protection and reparations. Nineteen states have incorporated the legislation into their statutes, but as of December 2014, only nine were in compliance with the federal law, which limits local responses. In Guerrero, the state with the highest rate of new displacement in 2014, a law on IDPs was enacted in July.

In the same month, the Executive Commission for the Assistance of Victims (known by its Spanish acronym CEAV) declared forced internal displacement in itself an act of violence that requires special attention and a differentiated response.^[47] This is an important step forward, because it allows victims to join the federal registry of victims. As of December 2014, 15 displaced families from Chihuahua had joined the federal registry, and 300 in Sinaloa were in process of registering at the state level. This is the only sign Mexican authorities have shown of recognising the phenomenon at the national level. That said, CEAV's capacity to intervene and grant reparations is extremely limited. It works with a meagre budget and has no comprehensive programme or protocol to deal with IDPs.

In Peru, at least 150,000 people who fled their homes during the 1980 to 1990 armed conflict are still living in protracted displacement. They have been unable to integrate locally into their host communities because of a lack of livelihood and education opportunities and language barriers.^[48] Their access to reparation, compensation and relocation programmes has also been limited.

None of the Nor thern Triangle countries has adopted a national law on displacement, and the Guatemalan government is reticent even to officially acknowledge the phenomenon. Honduras has established an inter-institutional commission for IDPs' protection, which began work in March 2014. In collaboration with JIPS and UNHCR it is studying and mapping displacement as a first step towards a coordinated response. Meantime, however, impoverished and vulnerable IDPs living on the fringes of main urban centres receive no assistance. Fifteen local NGOs have formed a network under the leadership of the Centre for the Investigation and Protection of Human Rights (known by its Spanish acronym CIPRODEH) to assist IDPs and advocate for a comprehensive national policy on displacement.

El Salvador and Honduras signed collaboration agreements with UNHCR in 2013 to support their responses to displacement. In April 2014 the Central American Integration System (known by its Spanish acronym SICA) signed an agreement, also with UNHCR, which will serve as a framework to promote the rights of refugees, unaccompanied children and IDPs in the region.^[49]

The Cartagena + 30 process and IDPs in the Americas

2014 marked the 30th anniversary of the landmark 1984 Cartagena declaration on refugees in Latin America. In the run-up to the ministerial meeting in Brasilia at the end of the year, governments, civil society, humanitarian agencies and academics held four sub-regional and regional meetings to discuss the main challenges in the region, including responses to internal displacement.

Civil society organisations were particularly concerned about the detention and deportation of unaccompanied minors at the US-Mexico border, and the plight of the IDPs in the region more generally. They acknowledged "new" nonstate groups and generalised violence as the key drivers of internal and crossborder displacement. The sub-regional discussions focused on the multiple causes of the phenomenon and the need to include IDPs and refugees in discussions that affect their lives and to give specific attention to the most vulnerable groups.^[50]

Participants also called for Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries to adopt the Guiding Principles and incorporate them into their statutes, meet international standards of assistance and reparation, introduce effective prevention and monitoring mechanisms, and to work within UNHCR's durable solutions framework. There were also calls for greater burden sharing, solidarity and coopera- tion in the region.

The Brazil summit produced an action plan on asylum, unaccompanied minors and refugees, but not for IDPs and their protection. Despite its prevalence elsewhere in the region, internal displacement caused by criminal violence was only recognised as an issue in the Northern Triangle, and Mexico was not included in proposals for a new human rights observatory on displacement.^[51]

4 UARIV, January to December, 2014

5 Rey F and Duval S, The humanitarian dimension in the aftermath of a peace agreement: proposals for the international community in Colombia, 11 February 2015, available at: http://goo.gl/hCM71l

6 Ibid

7 Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Los Derechos Humanos en Debate: Entre el cinismo oficial y la dignidad de los Pueblos, October 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/GaJcLr; SinEmbargo, Chiapas: Tierra de desplazados.. por su propio gobierno, 4 February 2015, available at: http://goo.gl/Q8BzRO

8 Instituto Universitario de Opinioón Pública (Iudop), Encuesta del país a finales del 2014. Series de Informes No. 137, 16 to 25 November 2014

9 Óscar Martínez, Ser nadie en tierra de narcos, Sala Negra, El Faro, 3 November 2011, available at: http://www.salanegra.elfaro.net/es/201110/cronicas/6451/, last visited 17 January 2015.

10 Prensa Libre, Continúa el desalojo en asentamiento Linda Vista, 31 July 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/TgrWW1; El Perioódico, Campesinos denuncian desalojo violento, 16 August 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/TBqoWQ

11 Gema Santamaría, Drugs, Gangs and Vigilantes: How to tackle the new breeds of Mexico's armed violence, Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre, December 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/C41H2o

12 InSightCrime, Latin America Dominates List of World's Most Violent Cities, 22 January 2015, available at: http://goo.gl/Ykn2Wc

13 Santamaría, 2014, op. cit.

14 Animal Político, "¿Qué ocurrió en Tlatlaya minuto a minuto, según la CNDH?" October 2014, available at http://goo.gl/lbB3BK

15 Revista Proceso, La Huella de los Militares, 23 December 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/CyvHlU

16 InSightCrime, Fosas comunes en El Salvador ejercen presión sobre la tregua de pandillas, 11 December 2013, available at: http://goo.gl/CDCYau; La Prensa Grafica, IML alerta de más fosas clandestinas en el AMSS, 11 January 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/lXRu7i

17 Animal Politico, Documenta CNDH más de mil cadáveres en fosas clandestinas, 12 July 2011, available at: http://goo.gl/ka7hvw

18 HRW, World Report 2015, 2015, available at: http://goo.gl/SZnj0W

19 UNHCR, Children on the Run: Unaccompanied Children Leaving Central America and Mexico and the Need for International Protection, 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/87wiSm; CGRS, Niñez y migración en Centro y Norte América: causas, políticas, prácticas y desafíos, February 2015, available at: http://goo.gl/OBLP32

20 Ibid

21 HRW, 2015, op. cit.

22 Noticiasnet, Desplazados triquis, a la deriva; piden apoyo, 13 October 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/ckZkxV; Chiapas Paralelo, Denuncian indiferencia gubernamental ante la intolerancia religiosa en Chiapas, available at: http://goo.gl/ldrPxA

23 HRW, 2015, op. cit.

24 Ibid

25 OHCHR, Observaciones finales sobre el informe presentado por México en virtud del artículo 29, párrafo 1, de la Convención, 13 February 2015, available at: http://goo.gl/oYNtR5

26 Amnesty International, Mexico, 25 June 2013, available at: http://goo.gl/nsqjhe; El Universal, 102 periodistas muertos en el pais en 14 anos, 17 June 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/3gmCKc

27 http://goo.gl/iDno00, last visited 15 February 2015

28 La Prensa Grafica, UNICEF pide fondos y peso político para frenar ataques a niños, 7 May 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/yzIE1y

29 CIDEHUM, Forced Displacement and Protection Needs produced by new forms of Violence and Criminality in Central America, May 2012, available at: http://goo.gl/IvFPck; David Cantor, 2014, Op Cit

30 HRW, 2015, op. cit.

31 The Americas Barometer, Latin American Public Opinion Project, available at: http://goo.gl/HvNeCz, last visited 27 January 2015

32 CIA, The World Fact Book, available at: http://goo.gl/LejdF2, last visited 2 February 2015

33 Aaron Korthuis, op. cit.

34 CGRS, Niñez y migración en Centro y Norte América: causas, políticas, prácticas y desafíos, February 2015, available at: http://goo.gl/kcFlI9

35 Ibid

36 HRW 2015, op. cit.; Korthuis, op. cit., p.17

37 Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Análisis de fuentes de información existentes sobre migración y violencia en Honduras: Una perspectiva de desplazamiento forzado, 2013

38 MAS.SV, Huyen por salbeques, 20 January 2015, available at: http://goo.gl/1BCtbf

39 La Prensa Grafica, Familias huyen tras crimen de hermanos, 2 November 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/xABWQA

40 David Cantor, 2014, op. cit.

41 Brookings, Building Peace in the Midst of Conflict: Improving Security and Finding Durable Solutions to Displacement in Colombia, 16 September 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/qYlVxx

42 Reconciliacion Colombia, Los desplazados son más pobres que el resto de la población, 16 February 2015, available at: http://goo.gl/eK5F38

43 Amnesty International, A land title is not enough: Ensuring sustainable land restitution in Colombia, November 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/oNW6KX

44 Ibid

45 Unidad para la Atencioón y Reparacioón Integral de las Víctimas, Informe analítico sobre la medición de indicadores de goce efectivo de derecho de la población desplazada, January 2015, available at: http://goo.gl/ddXG3l

46 UNHCR, 2015 UNHCR country operations profile – Colombia, available at: http://goo.gl/2a7r1S, last accessed on 26 March 2015

47 Animal Politico, La Comisión de Atención a Víctimas y el desplazamiento interno forzado, 1 December 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/ia7zga

48 Gavin David White, Desplazamiento, descentralización y reparación tras el conflicto en Perú, 1 September 2009, available at: http://goo.gl/JAkLSj

49 See: http://goo.gl/R8ZnBX, last visited 12 February 2015

50 Movilidad Humana, Posicionamiento de la sociedad civil mesoamericana ene el marco de la commemoracion de Cartagena+30, 2 July 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/Vb5TdF

51 +30 Cartagena, Brazil Declaration, 3 December 2014, available at: http://goo.gl/8NDAfr