Human rights and humanitarian aid workers who seek to protect and assist the displaced are themselves increasingly at risk. Several have been murdered (four in 2000 alone), disappeared, or kidnapped, many others have been threatened. In 2000, 39 human rights workers had to flee the country or go into hiding. According to the UNHCHR, the Colombian government has made "no significant progress...in adopting effective measures to counter the increase in attacks and threats against national and international humanitarian aid agencies providing assistance to the displaced."

The Plight of Children

In a March 2000 report on children and forced displacement in Colombia, CODHES said that "77 percent of children and young people who were receiving education in the areas of expulsion did not enter academic institutions after being displaced." While public education is supposed to be available to the displaced, many children stay out of school because their parents can’t buy them shoes, uniforms, or books, or pay the registration fees that even public schools charge in order to make ends meet. In shantytowns, there generally are no schools.

Unable to study and living in dire poverty, many children are forced to beg in the streets of Colombia's major cities. According to CODHES, "Displaced minors have to live among diverse kinds of violence such as juvenile gangs, urban militias, and other groups who impose norms and codes which limit their rights and prolong the scenarios of threats, fear, and death which are characteristic of the zones of expulsion [the areas from which displaced persons fled]." Many young people get entangled in crime and prostitution. Others are recruited by the same armed groups that were responsible for their displacement in the first place.

Displacement Intensifies Persecution

Displaced persons face dangers from all sides. The Brookings report notes, "The very fact that they have fled areas of fighting provokes suspicion.... Many [displaced persons] continue to fear for their lives." Paramilitaries and guerrillas sometimes comb the cities for people they have targeted. According to the UNHCHR, the leaders of displaced communities are particularly at risk.

In March 2000, paramilitaries killed three displaced leaders in Turbo, Valle del Cauca Department; in June, they killed more than a dozen displaced persons who just days earlier had fled to Buenaventura, on the Pacific coast, following an attack on their villages by paramilitaries. In September, paramilitaries threatened to kill displaced persons in Tulua, also in Valle Department, if they did not return to their homes. The government's only response was to establish a commission to study the situation. According to the UNHCHR, in the absence of concrete government action to protect them, many of the displaced "felt constrained to submit to the paramilitaries' will."