REFVIEW

Borders

The UN Refugee Agency Bureau for the Americas

The UN Refugee Agency

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refview NUMBER 4 October 2006

editorial by the Director of the Americas 3

working at the Borders 4

ECUADOR: reaching out to Colombian refugees in ecuador’s Amazonian forest 8

COLOMBIA: Community gardens grow new social ties for dislaced families near the ecuadorian border 10

COSTA RICA: More refugees arrive in Costa rica through southern border with Panama 11

BRAZIL : Colombians look for safety in Brazil’s border areas 12

CHILE : Chilean city opens its doors to Colombian refugees 13

MEXICO: refugee Protection within the migratory flow on the border between Mexico and Guatemala. 14

USA: Anti-terror law delays entry of refugees to US 15

CANADA: Canada’s downward trend in asylum figures shows signs of levelling off 16

refugee voices 17

GUEST EDITORIALIST: volmar Perez Ortiz 18

COLOMBIA, MEXICO, COSTA RICA: from the field 19

STAFF DIARY: field visit to refugee Communities in Jaque, Panama 21

UNHCr on line in Spanish 23

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DirectorPhilippe Lavanchy

Coordinator Nazli Zaki

EditorMarie Helene Verney

ProductionVirginia Pico Nazli Zaki

EditorialistPhilippe Lavanchy

Guest editorialistVolmar Perez Ortiz

CollaboratorsHeidi BoasMariana EchandiLuiz Fernando GodinhoMarion HoffmannTim IrwinGiovanni MongeJuan Carlos MurilloNanda Na Champassak Gustavo ValdiviesoMarie-Helene VerneyNazli Zaki

Original design Viceversa Asesoria Creativa Adaptation of design AGVisual.com.ar Printing Artes Graficas Kuce SA

Refview is a publication of the Bureau for the Americas. The opinions expressed by our collaborators do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR. Refview editors reserve the right to edit all articles prior to publication. No authorisation is required for the reproduction of articles and photos without copyright. Please credit UNHCR.

Many Colombians have been forced to flee their homes and come to Brazil for a safe haven.

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COVERPAGE PHOTOColombian refugees in Tres Fronteras, Ecuador.

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Editorial

Cucuta, Lago Agrio, Apartado, San Cristóbal, Mocoa: the list of UNHCR field locations on both

sides of Colombia’s borders goes on and on… Why are we there? Because it is our responsibility, as the United Nations Ref-ugee Agency, to be in the places where people in need of protection have fled, both inside and outside of Colombia. Inside Colombia, the border areas are strategic zones for armed actors to control. As a result, heavy fighting and mass displacement are frequent occurrences in these regions. UNHCR, mandated to protect Colombia’s inter-nally displaced population, has opened some ten field offices within the country, primarily along its periphery, to address the protection needs of the displaced. In surrounding countries, UNHCR maintains a full time presence to ensure that those fleeing the Colombian conflict have access to asylum. For years, Co-lombians have settled along the border in neighboring countries, where they have co-existed with relative anonymity in communities with whom they have much in common. For a variety of rea-sons, primarily out of fear for their secu-rity, many have not registered with the national authorities to apply for asylum. Among the new arrivals, the majority are women and children from rural areas, many of whom have only very basic ed-ucation. They mingle with impoverished locals and compete for the already scant resources of these communities. In this context, the protection chal-lenge is to ensure that Colombia’s dis-placed population has access to basic services. The “Borders of Solidarity” programme – a key component of the Mexico Plan of Action – aims at ad-dressing the needs of IDPs, refugees

and host communities. The focus is on infrastructure and access to basic ser-vices, particularly with respect to health and education. The “Borders of Solidarity” pro-gramme has a territorial rather than a population approach, facilitating opportunities for employment and in-come-generating projects that benefit displaced persons as well as their host communities. By fostering development in border areas, the programme pro-motes the implementation of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. UNHCR is encouraging the engage-ment of other UN agencies with devel-opment mandates to join in efforts to promote growth in border areas. To this end, UN Thematic Border Groups have been set up in Ecuador and Venezuela. Given the very high inci-dence of intra-family violence, as well as gender-based violence, sex trade and

high HIV risk in border areas, sexual and reproductive health projects, carried out with UNIFEM and UNFPA, are among the latest joint projects to be implement-ed in both countries. In border areas, development work and protection go hand in hand, and depend on effective cooperation be-tween all partners, from NGOs to UN agencies and above all national authori-ties, to make a significant and positive difference to the life of local and refugee populations alike. Philippe Lavanchy

Director

Bureau for the Americas

Philippe Lavanchy, Director of UNHCR’s Bureau for the Americas.

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Working at the Borders

For most of its 1,600 kilometre journey from the Andes to the Amazons, the River Putumayo is

the natural border between Colombia and its three southern neighbours – Ecuador, Peru and Brazil. It runs through thick Amazonian rainforest across a remote and largely uninhabited region. Tres Fronteras is the last river com-munity along the Ecuadorian bank of the river before reaching Peru. It is a small settlement of only a few wooden houses, with no electricity, no sanitation and not a single shop. The majority of the population is Colombian: some have been there for years, others like Teresa and her family crossed over only a few months ago, when her two boys faced the threat of forced recruitment into an illegal armed group. “My boys are fourteen and sixteen,” Teresa explains, “we knew what would happen if we said no: you are either with them or against them, and if you are against them they kill you.” “They” are the local members of one of Colombia’s irregular armed groups active in the Putumayo department. Te-resa won’t name the group. Even though she has come to a new country, she is still scared. “We are right at the border,” she says, “it’s easy for anyone to cross and do what they want to do. If we open our mouth, we get into trouble, so it is better to not say anything.” The military push against irregular armed groups in Colombia has forced il-legal actors to retreat to the edges of the country, leading to an intensification of the armed conflict in border areas. The Putumayo region is a typical exam-ple: most of the elements that fuel the four-decade long conflict have con-verged here - irregular armed groups, il-

licit crops, entry of weapons and exit of drugs – to contribute to the deadly spi-ral of violence. Forced displacement from and within border areas is one of the consequenc-es, both inside Colombia and across its borders. Every year, thousands of Co-lombians make the trip across the Putu-mayo River to escape violence and per-secution. In Ecuador alone, there could be up to �50,000 Colombians in need of protection. Colombians are also crossing into Peru and an estimated 4,000 live near the border in Brazil. The real magnitude of these cross-ings is not known. Colombians who flee their country often stay close to the

border and live in very remote commu-nities with little or no state presence. Most never register with the national au-thorities, either because of lack of op-portunity or because they are scared to do so. Often, they do not even know that they might be entitled to any form of international protection. As the focus of national governments in the region shifts increasingly towards security and border control, there is also concern that the rights of Colombians to seek asylum may be hindered. “Under-registration is a major prob-lem,” says Philippe Lavanchy, Director of UNHCR’s Bureau for the Americas. “In practice, it means that the very pres-

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Colombian asylum-seekers entering Ecuador via the San Miguel bridge which joins the two countries.

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ence of people in need of protection is not even known. As a result, these peo-ple don’t have documentation, they don’t have access to public services and they don’t receive humanitarian as-sistance. The challenge, for us and for the host countries, is to identify this population and answer its protection needs.” Borders of Solidarity To assist those who were falling through the protection net, UNHCR has reviewed and realigned its protection strategy in Colombia’s neighboring countries. In recent months, UNHCR teams on both sides of Colombia’s bor-ders have intensified their efforts to reach out to people in need of protec-tion who are not yet registered. Distances and lack of resources pose considerable challenges. It takes several days by boat and hours of walking through the jungle to reach the more re-mote locations and the security is vola-tile at best. Nevertheless, monitoring missions have been sent out to the Bra-zil-Colombian border, the Ecuador-Co-lombia border and the Peru-Ecuador-Colombia triangle. Until this summer, UNHCR had never been to Tres Fronteras. Now it is run-ning a project, through its Ecuadorian implementing partner Fundacion Esquel, to create a protection network for refu-gees and asylum seekers that until now had remained “invisible.” The main ob-jective is local integration and conflict prevention thought Direct Protection Projects (DPP) requiring close coopera-tion between community members and local authorities. Until she spoke with a UNHCR staff, Teresa had no idea that she and her

family were entitled to ask for asylum in Ecuador. She had heard that people forced to displace within Colombia were entitled to some governmental help but had not realized that the concept ex-tended across international borders. “I thought we had no right to be here and that we had to hide,” she says, “but it worried me for the children. We can-not go back to Colombia and what kind of a life will it be for them if they have to hide all the time? Now I know that there is a hope they can have a normal life, even if it is not going to be easy.” In August, UNHCR also started a similar conflict prevention and aware-ness-raising project just across the bor-der in Peru with the support of the Unit-ed Kingdom Global Conflict Prevention Pool. Under this initiative, the refugee agency will run a series of workshops for the military, the police and Peruvian immigration officials along the Colombi-an border to raise awareness of refugee issues and rights. “Many Colombians arrive in Peru un-documented and often they face dis-crimination from the local authorities and communities,” says John Fredrik-son, UNHCR’s Representative for Peru. “In such a context, the first step is to provide information to help reduce the tension. We have a similar project run-ning very successfully along the Colombia-Venezuela border, and we hope to get positive results in Peru too.” But protection and human rights are only one facet of a much wider problem. The vast majority of border areas, in Co-lombia and neighbouring countries, are economically deprived and suffer from underdevelopment, a situation that af-fects the local populations just as much as refugees and displaced people. This developmental problem was one of the

main challenges to protection identified in the Mexico Plan of Action, a broad platform adopted in late �004 by UN-HCR and more than twenty Latin Ameri-can states to help refugees and dis-placed people in the region. In order to address this developmen-tal gap, the Mexico Plan of Action aims at facilitating employment and produc-tive projects in border areas and to ben-efit both refugees and the local commu-nities that host them. The focus is on in-frastructure and access to basic servic-es, particularly in the areas of health of and education. Rather than targeting specific groups, the overall approach is territorial, based on the underlying prin-ciple that refugee issues can not be ad-dressed in isolation from the develop-ment issues affecting the entire popula-tion. Productive projects are now up and running in many locations along Colom-bia’s borders – they include micro-credit projects and communal banks for refu-gees and local populations, as well as training for self-employment initiatives. These productive projects are usually small-scale and many of them benefit women, who often find themselves in the new position of having to provide for their families after forced displacement. The reality, however, is that UNHCR alone cannot hope to bridge the devel-opmental gap in border areas and that it relies on close cooperation with other UN agencies and above all with the na-tional authorities to foster economic growth in border areas. “There is a growing awareness that we can achieve a lot more by working together and adopting a holistic ap-proach to a given area,” says Marta Juarez, UNHCR’s Representative in Ec-uador. “When we first opened a UNHCR

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office in Lago Agrio, next to the Colom-bian border, we were the only UN agen-cy on the ground. Today we are working with many other UN agencies to ad-dress the needs of the entire population in many areas, notably health, educa-tion, income generation and infrastruc-ture. Earlier this year, for example, seven UN agencies came together to support the authorities in a programme of pre-vention and treatment of HIV/AIDS and a UN interagency field office is set to open in Lago Agrio in September.” Progress is encouraging but slow. The implementation of joint projects in the more remote locations like Tres Fronteras remains a challenge. Distanc-es, poor or non-existent infrastructure and lack of state presence all combine to make viable projects difficult to set up and almost impossible to follow through. Yet it is probably in such re-mote communities that the need is greatest. Tres Fronteras lacks in every-thing, from clean water to school sup-

plies, and the situation is the same if not worse in many other settlements on both sides of the Putumayo River. “We are well and truly forgotten,” says Jorge, the one and only school-teacher for Tres Fronteras and half a dozen other neighbouring river settle-ments. “Children here are dying of ma-laria, they get sick because they drink water from the river, but who is helping us? We asked for a path to be cut through the forest so that children can walk to school instead of having to come by pirogue, but even that has not happened.” The New Borders The problematic of working in border zones is of course not new to UNHCR, whose core mandate is the protection of people who cross an international frontier to escape persecution. But with-in this problematic, new issues have arisen in recent years that are requiring

greater flexibility and new joint strategies from UNHCR and nation states. High on this agenda is the theme of mixed mi-gratory movements in which migrants and refugees move alongside each oth-er, using similar routes and modes of transport to cross international borders. On the Guatemalan border, the small city of Tapachula in the southern Mexi-can state of Chiapas is the main entry point for tens of thousands of South Americans who every year attempt the journey to the United States via Mexico. The true numbers are impossible to know. In the first five months of this year alone, more than 107,000 people were detained and later sent away from Tapa-chula for illegally trying to cross the bor-der. Mixed among these illegal immi-grants, asylum-seekers and other peo-ple in need of international protection are also attempting to enter Mexico. Most come from Guatemala, El Salva-dor, Honduras and Colombia, but oth-ers have traveled from as far as Africa. Some of them have fallen prey to smug-glers, the majority are undocumented. In �00�, UNHCR opened an office in Tapachula to monitor the border and provide legal assistance for those peo-ple in need of protection. Unveiling a ten-point plan of action to address mixed migratory movements earlier this year, High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres called on all States to ensure a fair balance between national sovereignty and border control on the one hand and the rights of refu-gees and asylum seekers on the other. “While recognizing the difficulties that such movements can pose for states in terms of national security we must en-sure that the measures taken to curb ir-regular migration do not prevent refu-

Here, the UNHCR team on its way to Puerto Carmen in Ecuador with the Ecuatorian Red Cross to distribute food rations from the World Food Program.

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gees from gaining the international pro-tection which they need and to which they are entitled,” the High Commis-sioner said. Although Guterres was addressing the Euro-African Ministerial Conference on Migration and Development in Mo-rocco, his remarks are also very relevant for the American continent. In the Amer-icas too, a wide development gap be-tween north and south is acting as a magnet for people northwards and here too the danger exists that measures taken to control illegal immigration will infringe upon the rights of asylum seek-ers. This threat is compounded by the in-creasingly tight measures imposed all over the world to counter international terrorism. While states have the right and duty to protect their own citizens and territory, there is a danger that peo-ple who are themselves the victims of terrorism may lose their right to asylum. Stringent new rules imposed in several countries may for example endanger the chances of Colombians to seek asylum or resettlement elsewhere. In Southern Latin America, borders have on the whole remained open but much work needs to be done with im-migration and border officials to help them identify potential asylum seekers and other people of concern to UN-HCR. In this region too, under-registra-tion is a growing problem. “Training activities with border offi-cials last year have confirmed what we have been suspecting for a while: that there are many more people of concern arriving on a regular basis than those who actually request asylum,” says Flor Rojas, UNHCR Representative for Southern Latin America. UNHCR expects the situation to

change once refugee laws are passed in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, the most advanced project at this stage being in Argentina. In the meantime, UNHCR is working with protection networks in border areas to reduce the number of potential asylum seekers who may be falling through the cracks. Protection and development needs vary widely across the American conti-nent, but everywhere effective partner-ships are the cornerstone upon which UNHCR can build. The concept of part-nership is at the core of the Mexico Plan of Action and extends to cooperation between UN agencies, with national au-thorities and across borders – including between north and south.

For thousands of refugees and dis-placed persons in the Americas, effec-tive partnerships have meant the chance of resettlement, of starting a small business or of sending their chil-dren to school. For Teresa in Tres Fron-teras, the concrete result of good part-nership is that she and her children can now lead their lives in the open as legal-ly registered asylum-seekers. It is a start, on which she hopes to build a better future for her children, an ambi-tion that will require the joint efforts of governments and international organiza-tions working to help refugees and the border communities in which they live. By Marie-Helene Verney in Bogota

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Colombian girl in Tres Fronteras, Ecuador. The lack of state services in this remote border region badly affects local and refugee children alike.

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Reaching out to Colombian refugees in Ecuador’s Amazonian forest

eCUADoR

The shifting of the Colombian conflict away from the cities and towards bor-der regions in recent years is putting increasing pressure on neighbouring countries. Ecuador, which shares a border with two of Colombia’s most troubled departments – Nariño and Putumayo – registers several hundred new Colombian asylum seekers every month. Yet the registered cases are only the tip of the iceberg and the biggest challenge facing UNHCR in Ecuador is to reach out to all those in need of pro-tection in the country.

Pedro was �9 when he arrived with his family to Puerto Car-men, a small Amazonian town

on the Ecuadorian side of the San Miguel River. He had spent the previous ten years fleeing from one region of Colombia to the next in pursuit of an

ever-receding dream of peace and se-curity. “It was the same everywhere we went,” he remembers, “in Antioquia one group told our entire village to leave and we lost the farm. After that I started truck-driving but in Colombia it is a dangerous job. One group would stop you at a checkpoint and ask for money: if you didn’t pay they would kill you, if you paid the other group would kill you at the next checkpoint. One way or an-other, eventually, they would kill you.” One day, after being stopped and se-verely beaten at yet another checkpoint in the southern department of Putu-mayo, Pedro had had enough. “It’s time to leave,” he remembers thinking, “this is my country but it has brought me nothing but grief and fear. Nothing good will come out of staying here.” The solution was near at hand: a ten-

minute boat ride away, Ecuador offered the promise of a safe haven. Pedro made the crossing with his wife and three children and joined a large Colom-bian community in Puerto Carmen. Of the 5,000 people who live in and around the small city, as many as half could be Colombians. “We only have estimated figures,” says Marta Juarez, UNHCR’s Represen-tative in Ecuador. “There might be up to a quarter of a million Colombians in the country who need UNHCR’s help but only about 14,000 are registered with us. We are working with the Ecuadorian government to ensure that people with protection needs get the assistance they are entitled to. But first we must know who they are and our most urgent priority is reaching out to them.” But the remoteness of Ecuador’s northern border makes reaching out to people in need a hard challenge. Puerto Carmen, a four-hour drive away from the nearest UNHCR office, Lago Agrio in the province of Sucumbios, is one of the most accessible locations in this Amazonian region. There are dozens more little communities spread out all the way to the Peruvian border that can only be reached by boat. It takes up to a day’s travelling downriver from Puerto Carmen to reach some of the most iso-lated places and few of the local people can afford the price of gasoline. Fear and lack of information add to the isolation of those most in need. Co-lombia is only minutes away and many people are still so scared and trauma-tized that they will not speak out, even to seek protection. Many do not even know that help might be available. Pedro has never thought of register-ing as an asylum seeker. He still thinks of himself as a “displaced person” and

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Colombian chidlren in Puerto Carmen, Ecuador. It takes hours on bad dirt roads to reach Puerto Carmen, one of the most accessible communities in this part of eastern Ecuador.

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cess mean that income-generating and productive projects are hard to imple-ment and almost impossible to follow up, yet it is probably in such areas that the needs are greatest. Pedro did not get any food rations for himself or his children. After talking with the others, he readily agreed his family was not among those most in need. Although he is not working at the moment, he did get a few weeks of paid labour last month and he has a small garden to grow vegetables. “It is not always easy here, there is not much work and of course Ecuador-ians prefer to give jobs to Ecuador-ians,” he says. “Often they think that all Colombians are bad people, violent people. It makes me very sad that my country is so badly thought-of but whose fault is it? There has been so much violence for so long and still it goes on as if it will never end.” “It is a beautiful country,” he adds, watching the sun set across the river over Colombia, “but after all that has happened I don’t think I will ever find the strength in my heart to go back.” By Marie-Helene Verney

in Puerto Carmen

Reaching out to Colombian refugees in Ecuador’s Amazonian forest

A UNHCR staff tells a Colombian woman in Puerto Carmen, Ecuador, of her rights. Lack of information is one of the biggest challenges facing Colombians in the area.

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has no idea he could be entitled to international protection. He listens care-fully when a UNHCR staff explains the difference between displaced people, who stay within the boundaries of their own country, and refugees, who cross an international border to escape per-secution. Pedro lives in fear that he will one day be sent back to Colombia with his family and he is relieved to learn there might be a way he can regularize his situation in Ecuador. “There is a very big need for infor-mation,” says Oscar Butragueño, who heads UNHCR’s field office in the re-gion. “People have to know about their rights to be able to rebuild their lives. But there are also some very basic hu-manitarian needs to be met: food, clean water, healthcare. Whenever we come, we try to join forces with other organi-zations in order to address as many of these needs as possible. There is no point telling people about their rights if they are too hungry or sick to hear what we are telling them.” On this occasion, the UNHCR team has come with the Ecuadorian Red Cross to distribute food rations from the World Food Programme. The rations are for those most in need among the reg-istered Colombian population: women alone with their children, elderly and sick people, those who have just arrived and cannot rely on any support system. Word of mouth has gone round that UNHCR is bringing food rations and people have been travelling since dawn from faraway river communities to get to Puerto Carmen on time for the distribu-tion. It soon becomes apparent that there will not be enough rations for everyone and the only solution is to ask the refu-gee community itself to prioritize and

decide who most needs the food. The distribution goes smoothly, even though the selection process is such a difficult one. Many among the waiting crowd are obviously malnourished. Ecuador’s bor-der region is one of the poorest in the country, and life here is hard for Ecuadorians and Colombians alike. To make matters worse, there is very little state presence and services to alle-viate poverty – a situation strikingly simi-lar to that encountered on the Colom-bian bank of the San Miguel River. While an international border separates them, deprived communities suffering from the consequences, direct or indirect, of the Colombian conflict are struggling with the same difficulties on both sides of the river and UNHCR teams in Ecuador and Colombia are working closely together to help address their common needs. This focus on borders is an integral part of the Mexico Plan of Action, a broad programme promoted by the refugee agency to help refugees and displaced persons in Latin America. Signed in late �004, the Mexico Plan of Action is still new and, while much has been achieved, a lot remains to be done to put it into action in remote locations like Puerto Carmen. Difficulties of ac-

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Colombia, Roberto Meier, says that the community gardens are part of a comprehensive strategy for strengthen-ing displaced persons’ organizations. “Income generation is essential for the recovery of rights of displaced persons, but in this case we can enrich the process in several ways. The sense of community developed helps the whole process of participation in institutional spaces.” The local and national authorities are supporting the initiative, which is a concrete outcome of the “Borders of Solidarity” program adopted under the Mexico Plan of Action, a broad initiative designed to help refugees and dis-placed persons in Latin America. Com-munities on all sides of Colombia’s bor-ders that are receiving large numbers of displaced people and refugees tend to be economically deprived and local inte-gration through productive projects like these gardens is a priority. The community gardens in La Hormiga and La Dorada are located on fields where coca used to be grown, and where the soil had been damaged by the heavy use of chemicals needed for coca cultivation. Now the soil is slowly recovering, just like those culti-vating it. As long as the conflict goes on in this part of Colombia, the community gardens will not be safe and neither will Teresa and the other displaced people in the project. But for now at least, both the gardens and the people are working for a chance to flourish. By Gustavo Valdivieso in Bogota *Name changed to protect her identity.

Community gardens grow new social ties for displaced families near the Ecuadorian border

CoLoMBIA

At the border between Colombia and Ecuador, the lower basin of the Putumayo River has for

years been torn by violence. It is a place where the armed conflict is fueled by economic as well as strategic interests and a large part of the rural economy is based on the cultivation and trafficking of coca. Killings and forced displace-ments are some of the tools used to control this strategic region. Yet, in two Colombian towns most badly hit by the violence - la Hormiga and La Dorada –, some �00 displaced persons have found a way out of the cycle of violence and illegal crops. A UNHCR-supported project of “com-munity gardens” is providing them with better food for less money and, above all, is re-building a social fabric that had been all but destroyed. Saturdays are minga days for part-ners of Nuevo Porvenir, an association of displaced persons in Lower Putumayo. Families gather early in the morning and spend the day doing com-munity work in the gardens: weeding, planting and tending to the various crops of corn, beans, bananas and yuc-

ca. The Catholic charity Caritas provides technical assistance to the project. “We were all members of Nuevo Porvenir before,” says Teresa*, the organization’s leader, “but we didn’t know each other very well. That place is the best therapy we’ve had: it’s fun. We come on Saturdays, but by Wednesday everybody is impatient to be here.” The community gardens were first initiated as an economic project, and already they have begun to yield profits: every family working in the La Dorada garden received �00 kilos of corn with the first harvest last October. It could have been more: unfortunately, a mis-directed anti-coca fumigation operation destroyed half the crop. But the economic gain is not all. Working together in the gardens also helps restore social ties that had almost disappeared from the lives of displaced people. “There are no community initiatives in coca zones, no mingas. In the gardens, people are learning again to collaborate with others,” says Edith Burbano, a UNHCR officer working with the project. UNHCR’s Representative in

Community garden in La Dorada, Putumayo, give displaced people a chance not only to grow food but also to rebuild social links.

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CoSTA RICA

More and more refugees are entering Costa Rica through the southern border with

Panama, as UNHCR was able to verify during visits to the area and through contacts with key institutions such as the Ombudsman’s Office. The arrival of Colombian refugees to Costa Rica became notable as of the second semester of �001, when the Colombian conflict intensified in border areas. At the beginning, when no entry visa was required of Colombian nation-als, the refugees arrived mainly through Costa Rica´s International Airport. However, after visas became a require-ment in �00�, refugees started arriv-ing through the southern border with Panama in greater numbers. Given that UNHCR does not have a presence in southern Costa Rica, a field mission was organized in early summer to Sixaola, the common border crossing point at the Caribbean area. The mis-sion was carried out in coordination and with the support of the Ombudsman’s Office and the General Direction for Mi-grations. The UNHCR office in Panama also participated in the joint mission, which fits well in the ‘Borders of Solidar-ity’ component of the Mexico Plan of Action. The border crossing point of Sixaola is an important transit centre for goods as well as persons between Panama and Costa Rica. It does not have enough human and technical resources to carry out an effective migratory con-trol, as was readily admitted by the local migration authorities. Officers pointed out the so-called “blind areas”, through which it is easy to transit from one side of the border to the other without any migratory control. The authorities confirmed to UNHCR a growing presence of Colombians in

More refugees arrive in Costa Rica through southern border with Panama

the area, entering Costa Rica through Panama. Very few come in through migration control and it is likely that this is linked to the difficulties of getting an entry visa, a migratory requirement for Colombians that is not requested in Panama. The authorities also confirmed a large presence of Afro Colombians in the area. According to these authorities, most of them arrived over the last few years to the province of Limon, many via Panama. The lack of migratory control over those who enter Costa Rica makes the monitoring of protection for asylum seekers even more difficult. According to the authorities, some Colombians have expressed their desire to request asylum. Those who do so are referred to the headquarters of the General Direction for Migrations in San Jose, where refugee status determination takes place. UNHCR’s partner, the Asociación de Consultores y Asesores Internacionales ACAI, has also observed an increased number of Colombian asylum seekers

arriving by land from Buenaventura on the Pacific Coast in Colombia, a situa-tion that will require further follow-up. Concern remains for those who enter Costa Rica in an irregular way and are later detained. Given the rise in num-bers and the difficulties of carrying out more effective border control, UNHCR will need to undertake periodic visits to the area and strengthen its links with key institutions in the area, such as the Ombudsman’s Office. It is also impor-tant to keep a close relationship with migration authorities so that they are in a position to identify and channel in an adequate fashion any asylum seekers who may try to enter Costa Rica either regularly or irregularly. UNHCR teams from Costa Rica and Panama will undertake another joint as-sessment mission to the border in late September to verify that asylum seekers have adequate access to asylum proce-dures at the border. Giovanni Monge in San Jose

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Colombians caught trying to cross the border irregularly.

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of the country. Indigenous populations living in the border area between Brazil, Colombia and Peru are also caught up in the conflict and there has been a marked increase in their movements. Ethnic groups are often split between the three countries and are automati-cally received by their sister community upon displacement. One typical example is that of the Ti-kuna nation. Its population is estimated to be of ��,000 in Brazil, 7,500 in Co-lombia and 5,500 in Peru. All speak the Tikuna language. In a recent survey, �00 Colombian Tikunas were found to be living in Brazil, while Peru was home to almost 400 of them. “The Colombian and indigenous pop-ulations in the Amazonian region need to be assisted under the international humanitarian law regime to assess their situation and respond to their protec-tion needs will be concrete outcomes of the Solidarity Borders initiative foreseen by the Mexico Plan of Action,” says UNHCR Representative in Brazil, Luis Varese. By Luiz Fernando Godinho in Brasilia

BRAzIL

“One of the groups set up a clan-destine cemetery for their people on our land and expelled us,” says

Israel, a Colombian peasant who now lives with his wife and daughter in Ta-batinga, a Brazilian city that borders Colombia, in the heart of the Amazonian region. “They killed my four brothers and I had no choice but to leave my house with my children. After some days in Bogota, we left for Brazil,” says another Colombian woman in Tabatinga, who now relies on the church for support. These testimonies, recently broad-cast on Brazilian television, portray the grim reality of life for thousands of Colombians in Brazil’s Amazonian re-gion. Most of them are victims of the decades-long armed conflict involving the Colombian army and irregular armed groups - as such they are a population of concern to UNHCR. According to first estimates, about 4,000 Colombian citizens live in the border region but it’s believed their numbers could be as high as 1�,000. They have very little security: displaced by the conflict in Colombia, they sought refuge on Brazilian territory but so far have not requested asylum before the national authorities. In order to better assess their situation, UNHCR Brazil and the Amazonian Federal University will conduct a survey along 1,500 km of the Amazon River in September of this year. Most of those who cross the border come via the city of Leticia in Colombia and arrive in Tabatinga, Brazil. Many stay near the border, but some choose to go further into Brazilian territory, often because they still feel at risk. “These people live in Brazil because they feel safer. Some avoid displacing

further due to the high cost of trans-portation in the Amazonian region, but others are leaving the border region far behind. It depends on the financial re-sources they have and how persecuted they feel close to the border,” says UNHCR Protection Officer in Brazil, Wel-lington Carneiro, who will be part of the survey team. Between �000 and �005, there was a six-fold rise in the numbers of formal asylum claims by Colombians in Brazil and many more cases are expected this year. NGOs working with refugees and migrants in Manaus report an av-erage of three new families asking for assistance every week. These numbers only reflect the presence of Colombians entering legally into Brazil. Those who come in irregularly are afraid of present-ing themselves to the national authori-ties, often reflecting fear patterns that originated in their own country. The rise in the numbers of Colombians seeking refuge in Brazil might be explained in part by the fact that the Colombian conflict has increas-ingly moved towards border areas in recent years, as the military pushes irregular armed groups to the fringes

Colombians look for safety in Brazil’s border areas

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Colombian communities living in the banks of Rio Purus, at the Amazon Region.

CHILE refview 1�

CHILe

Most Colombian asylum seek-ers who arrive in Chile enter the country through the north-

ern city of Arica, which lies on the bor-der with Peru. Until recently, they then had to travel a further �,000 kilometers to the capital Santiago to present their asylum claims. Faced with a growing number of Co-lombian asylum seekers over the past two years –requests in �005 doubled those presented in �004 - the UN Refu-gee agency has been working with the Chilean government to allow asylum seekers to present their claims in the north – this became possible in mid �005. “Interviewing asylum seekers is a very time-consuming task and we do not have additional staff for this. We feel the effort is worth it though and are motivated by the commitment to pro-vide Colombians with a choice which they did not have before. We also want to contribute to the implementation of Chile’s migration policies which are more open now,” explains Nevenka Aguilera, head of the Migrations depart-ment in Arica. Whereas the refugee population traditionally tended to concentrate in Santiago, a steadily growing number of Colombian asylum seekers have since chosen to remain in Arica: about half those who arrived there over the past 1� months have stayed on. Known as the City of Eternal Spring, Arica has a number of other attractions for the refugee population. In addition to easier access to health facilities, incentives to employers who take on immigrants, cheaper food and rent, its ethnically diverse and immigrant-based population of 1�0,000 provides what Father Ildo Gris of the Archdiocese de-scribes as a “family atmosphere”.

Chilean city opens its doors to Colombian refugees

Nelida, a ��-year old Colombian asy-lum seeker agrees. After her husband was persecuted for publicizing a visa fraud scheme and being temporarily protected under a witness protection program, she arrived there in Novem-ber with her husband and � year-old son. For the past few months, she has been working at the reception center for asylum seekers and immigrants run by the Archdiocese. She also holds several odd jobs in addition to running the cen-ter. Her husband works as a porter in a nearby school and is undergoing basic schooling to be able to go on to a better job. “At times it seems impossible to make ends meet, then suddenly things ease up,” she says. “Through it all, the people in Arica have been wonderful. It is often the ones who have the least who have helped us the most.” One of these is a woman she met at a prayer group who takes her on for housework whenever she can afford to pay her, and who invited her family over for Christ-mas dinner, gifts and all. Another is the Peruvian immigrant at the center, who taught her son to speak English, and helped him catch up with his school mates. As they wait for the government’s decision on the asylum requests how-ever, asylum seekers in Arica face some of the same challenges as those living elsewhere in the country. One of them is the issuance of a national identification number (RUT) necessary for access to a number of basic services. Asylum seek-ers acquire the RUT only when their cases have been accepted. “Several Colombian men in Arica are interested in taking courses to learn how to manage heavy equipment which would make getting a job here much easier, but they can’t because they

need the RUT to be able to do so,” ex-plains Father Gris. The situation of many Colombian men and women is expect-ed to improve in the short run once the government implements the measures it has promised to speed up access to a national identification number. In addition to those who decide to settle in Arica upon arrival, Fabio Varoli, UNHCR Programme Officer for South-ern Latin America says it may now be possible to provide resettled refugees with a choice of several cities prior to their arrival in the country. “Arica was the starting point, a number of other cities in the north would also become cities of solidarity for refugees: Antofa-gasta and Iquique for instance,” he says. In May, officials and civil society representatives from these two cities, which lie some 700 and �00 kilometers south of Arica, attended a workshop on asylum organized by UNHCR and its partners in Arica. Protection and local integration networks already in place prior to the event have been further strengthened since. According to Father Gris, who is fre-quently at the border, when Colombian asylum seekers arrive border officials now know how to handle them. “Of course more training and information will be required for a while to come, but effective networks are already in place and the north is ready to receive many more refugees,” he says. By Nazli Zaki in Buenos Aires

Colombian refugee in Chile.

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14 refview MEXICO

unaccompanied minors and to identify protection needs. Testimonies of a sample of 75 chil-dren revealed that about 1� per cent were fleeing situations of violence, abuse, from threats by uncontrollable and violent youth gangs or other situa-tions threatening their very lives. They had been found in the border areas, abandoned, deprived of all means, an easy prey for traffickers in victims of la-bor and sexual exploitation. UNHCR shared the findings with the Mexican government which took first action establishing a Working Group to examine ways to improve the system of detecting and treating children with special protection needs. UNHCR forms part of this Working Group. Although the complexity of the issues goes far beyond UNHCR’s particular mandate, it is acting as a catalyst in bringing the na-tional and international actors together to embark on joint actions. As the only UN agency with a pres-ence in the border area, UNHCR faces many challenges and will have to con-tinue to work closely with the authorities and with civil society throughout the region to ensure that no children whose human rights are at risk are returned to potentially even more dangerous situ-ations and that their basic rights are respected. By Marion Hoffmann in Mexico City

Refugee Protection within the migratory flow on the border between Mexico and Guatemala

MexICo

Non-accompanied minors in the reception center waiting to be picked up by relatives, after being returned to their countries.

The mass exodus of migrants from Cen-tral America through Mexico towards the United States and Canada bears many challenges to refugee protection, particularly for the most vulnerable of them all: unaccompanied minors.

The ‘American Dream’ is a pow-erful pull factor for hundreds of thousands of people from impov-

erished countries like Honduras, Gua-temala and El Salvador. During �005, Mexico’s National Migration Institute intercepted and detained hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants at the Southern border –the number of people who make it across may be three times as high. Now, an effective mechanism allows for a more efficient implementation of return agreements between Mexico and some of the Central American States. Most undocu-mented migrants are deported within �4 hours. This year, among those returned, there were 5,4�7 children, more than half of them not accompanied by any adult family member. Most were in search of a parent supposedly in the United States and would certainly head back across the border to re-try their luck at the next opportunity. Many were abandoned by their smugglers in the border area. Tapachula is a sleepy town at the Mexican-Guatemalan border. The shal-low Suchiate river makes up part of the border. At all times of the day, small rafts cross back and forth, transporting goods and people, among them many children. The UN refugee agency is the only international organization with an office in the area. From there, it monitors the situation to ensure that notwithstanding

the strict control mechanisms that Mex-ico put in place to keep international crime at bay, refugees among the flow of migrants have access to asylum and international protection. Since UNHCR opened its office in Tapachula in �00�, over 400 asylum claims have been filed some 50 of which successfully, through the Mexican Commission for the Assistance of Refu-gees (COMAR)’s local Office. Most asy-lum seekers came from Honduras, El Salvador and Colombia, but there were also people from farther away, such as Somalia, Ethiopia or Sudan. One of these is Andrae, a 17-year old Eritrean who had crossed the Atlantic and was brought to Guatemala by a smuggler who later abandoned him to his fate. An adolescent in an unknown land, speaking no Spanish, he later fell in the hands of another smuggler who brought him to the Mexican side of the border. In Tapachula, he contacted mi-gration authorities and applied for asy-lum. The alarmingly high rate of children among the migratory flow – about five per cent- gave rise to concern that these most vulnerable may warrant a closer examination of their protection needs. With the support of Save the Children the UN refugee agency recently implemented a three-month project through which a Child Protection Officer carried out a mapping exercise to docu-ment the situation of separated and

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Anti-terror law delays entry of refugees to US

USA

WASHINGTON - Are victims of terrorism being wrongly branded as supporters of

it? It’s a question that has appeared regularly in the US media over recent months. The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Miami Herald, National Public Radio and others have all run stories and editorials questioning aspects of an anti-terror law designed to keep members and supporters of terrorist organizations from entering the United States. Critics say a series of laws, culmi-nating in the Real ID Act, which was passed in �005, broaden the definitions of terrorism and support for terrorism, while making no clear exception for legitimate armed struggle or for those who have been forced to support a group under duress. Last year, four members of Myan-mar’s ethnic Chin community were de-nied asylum in the US because of their support for a pro-democracy opposition group. The four, who are also Christian, claimed they had been persecuted for their religion and ethnicity. Three said they had been detained and tortured by the military. Their asylum applica-tions were rejected because each had provided “material support” to the Chin National Front, an armed group which has not been designated as a terrorist organization by the State Department. The nature of that support ranged from allowing a CNF member to deliver a speech at a village gathering to pro-viding regular donations to the group amounting to around 600 dollars. The three torture victims were allowed to remain in the US under the Convention Against Torture. The fourth person, a middle aged woman and former teach-er, has remained in detention in Texas

since she entered the US from Mexico in �004 and asked for asylum. In its ruling on her subsequent appeal the Board of Immigration Appeals up-held the decision to deny her asylum on the grounds that she had provided ma-terial support to the CNF. The Board’s acting vice chairman agreed that the former teacher had a well founded fear of persecution if she returned to Myan-mar and noted that she posed no threat to the national security of the United States. The language of the material support statute, however, meant the BIA had no choice but to deny her applica-tion. In conclusion, the Board member questioned whether this was the result Congress intended when it enacted the material support law. “The law as currently written and interpreted denied refugee protection to those who are clearly entitled to it under international standards,” said Andrew Painter, Senior Protection Officer with the United Nations Refugee Agency in Washington. “This places the US at risk of violating its obligations under the refugee treaty that it signed and of returning bona fide refugees to persecu-tion.” In a letter sent by UNHCR Headquar-ters in Geneva to the US Government in August, UNHCR said the material support bar was forcing the agency to make adjustments to its resettle-ment operations. The bar has already resulted in the collapse of the US re-settlement program for Colombian refu-gees and has resulted in thousands of Myanmar refugees in Asia having their cases placed on hold. When a refugee’s resettlement application is put on hold for providing material support they are effectively branded as “terrorists,” po-tentially undermining both the availability

of refugee protection in their first coun-try of asylum and their chances of re-settlement to another country. To avoid this, UNHCR wrote that the agency had decided “to refrain from finalizing a sub-mission of any group or population to the United States for resettlement that may be subject to a material support bar until the United States issues an ef-fective waiver for them.” In order “to re-establish a degree of predictability to our joint resettlement ef-forts”, said UNHCR, the agency was re-questing the United States to indicate in advance which proposed resettlement groups might be subject to a material support bar. Based on that information UNHCR could then “consider other protection alternatives, including referral to other resettlement countries where possible.” In May one such waiver was issued for a group of 9,500 Karen refu-gees from Myanmar currently living in a camp in Thailand. Its effectiveness is now being assessed. Inside the El Paso immigration deten-tion centre, the former school teacher remains hopeful. Later this year her asylum application will move to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, one level be-low the US Supreme Court. The Depart-ment for Homeland Security has agreed she should come under the Convention Against Torture, meaning she will not be sent back to Myanmar. But even if freed from detention, a woman most agree deserves refugee protection could con-tinue to be labeled a terrorist. By Tim Irwin in Washington

16 refview CANADA

During the first half of �006, Canada resettled 4,109 refugees. Refugees from Africa accounted for 46 percent of resettled refugees with Ethiopians (454), Sudanese (��4) and Somalis (��4) as the main nationalities. Refugees from Asia and the Middle East represented �� percent with Afghans (7�9) being the single largest resettled group. Other nationalities included Iranians (19�) and Iraqis (151). Colombians ranked sec-ond after Afghanistan with 7�0 having been resettled by mid-�006. According to figures available from the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) for the first quarter of �006, the number of refugee claims finalized at the end of March was 5,54�. Of these, �,577 were accepted, �,�0� were re-jected, ��6 were abandoned and �71 were withdrawn. The number of refugee claims pending a decision at the end of March stood at �0,�7�. This reflects a significant drop when compared to over 5�,000 pending claims a few years ago. The current average processing times for refugee status decisions is eleven months, and the IRB is committed to bring it down further to six months. By Nanda Na Champassak in Ottawa * Claims from U.S. citizens reflect for the

most part children of claimants who were

born in the U.S. before making a claim in

Canada.

Canada’s downward trend in asylum figures shows signs of levelling off

CANADA

After four consecutive years of sharply declining numbers in asylum claims, Canada’s mid-

year figure for �006 totalled 10,07� claims, reflecting a 1�.5 percent in-crease when compared with �,7�1 for the same period last year. Based on the current monthly average, the projected forecast for the year could be in the region of �0,000, or slightly higher than the �005 annual total of 19,7�5. This could well suggest that the continuing decline in numbers is beginning to level off when seen over a five-year period (see table). While the 10,07� refugee claimants during the first half of the year repre-sented over 160 nationalities, the top ten source countries accounting for 55 percent of the total were: Mexico, China, Colombia, Sri Lanka, India, Zim-babwe, Pakistan, Nigeria, U.S.A.* and Haiti. The vast majority of asylum claims (6�%) were filed inland, indicating that many claimants had already entered Canada before filing a refugee claim. The five main source countries were Mexico (1,045), China (60�), Sri Lanka (�77), India (�71) and Pakistan (�66). While asylum claims filed at airports ac-counted for only 17 percent, a similar pattern in terms of source countries is evident with the top five source coun-tries being: Mexico (�77), China (100), India (9�), Sri Lanka (97) and Nigeria (65). Since the Safe Third Country Agree-ment between Canada and the United States came into effect at the end of �004, the number of claims made at the land border entry points decreased by over 50% according to figures pro-vided by the Canadian Government. The Agreement applies only to asylum claims filed at the Canada-U.S border,

allowing Canada to turn back asylum seekers entering from the U.S and vice-versa. In �004, prior to the implementa-tion of the Agreement, �5 percent or �,900 out of a total of �5,500 asylum claims were filed at the Canada-U.S border. At the end of �005, the figure for land border claims was 4,000 or roughly �0 percent of the total 19,700 asylum claims. At the end of June �006, �1 percent or �,104 claims were received at the border. The top source countries of refugee claimants at the border differ markedly from those who make inland and airport claims. The main countries of national-ity during the first half of the year were: Colombia (�56), Zimbabwe (���), USA (177), Haiti (159), Burundi (111), DRC (109), El Salvador (�0), Rwanda (77), Sri Lanka (74) and Guatemala (56). An important factor for the differ-ences in nationalities filed at the land border is that nationals of five of the countries – Zimbabwe, Haiti, Burundi, DRC and Rwanda - are from “mora-toria” countries. These are countries where Canada has in place a temporary suspension of removals owing to a situ-ation of generalized insecurity making it difficult to safely return a person to their country of origin. Under the terms of the Agreement, nationals of “moratoria” countries fall under the exceptions and are eligible to access Canada’s asylum system.

Year

�001

�00�

�00�

�004

�005

�006

Mid-Year

�1,000

15,700

17,500

11,�00

�,700

10,000

end-Year

44,700

�9,500

�1,�00

�5,500

19,700

�0,000 projected

REFUGEE VOICES refview 17

leader, he was not interested in politics, he never spoke about these things. He worked on the river. One Saturday, the men came. They took him away on a boat. There were four other men from the village as well.

All night, we waited and waited. I thought maybe he would be back in the morning, that they had only taken him to ask questions or that they had the wrong person. Men from the village went looking. They came back in the afternoon. They had found the bodies, in the forest, further downriver.

We all left together, 7� families. There was no time to pack anything, we only took what we could carry. I had to carry the baby, so I could not take very much else. By mule it is five hours to Unguia, but we did not have enough mules, so for us walking it took all day and all night.

Here in Unguia people have been very nice. They gave us a room to stay and we get food, at least for the next three months. I do not know what will happen after that. My family is from Antioquia, maybe I should go back to them. I am alone now, with the three children. The eldest is a boy, he is six. Then there is a girl of four. The baby is a boy, he is ten months old.

Today has been hard. I went to get the certificate that my husband is dead and that I am now a widow. It has made me feel very bad. I knew he was dead, of course, but at the same time until now it was like maybe it was not for real.

I feel very alone. And I am angry. Why did this happen to us? If I was to meet the killers, no, I would not say anything to them, because of the fear. But I will never forgive them and I will teach my children not to forgive.”

when I see cars with smoked windows I get really scared. It takes me a while to understand that I’m far away from my country. Here it’s quite normal to find guys dressed in military clothing. All the young men are wearing boots, jackets, t-shirts and caps with army prints. It’s fashionable. “But every time I see one of them, I’m afraid”. I wish I could go back to Colombia someday, once everyone has forgot-ten. You always miss your country, the house where you grew up, your family. I’m leaving behind my identity: �5 years. And that I cannot forget from dusk till dawn.´´

Maria is 22 and comes from a small settlement in Colom-bia’s Darian jungle, right on

the border with Panama. In July, Jesus, her husband was killed, along with four other men, by members of an irregular armed group. He was 25. Maria fled with her three children to the small town of Unguia, 18 kilometres away.

“I never thought that anything like this would happen to us. My husband was not involved in anything, he was not a

Refugee Voices

“It was a Friday the day they told me I had been accepted as a refugee. I was very happy, but then I felt sad

and homesick. I had a girlfriend back home. I try not to think about all the things that I left behind, because I will miss them even more. I know I have to move on and become self-sufficient. Now I’m working as a house painter but I studied law for over a year and a half in Colom-bia. Hopefully one day I will resume my studies because I want to help other people to improve their conditions and get their rights back, especially my people; to bring my knowledge back to my land, Colombia. I also want to prac-tice professional football. I want to play at the Pachuca team, because many of my fellow countrymen play there. Once I have my documents ready, I want to go to the capital, to keep a promise. I want to visit the Sanctuary of the Lady of Guadalupe. I told the Lady that I will go there to see her and meet her. Life here is very different from what I’ve always known: the music, the tradi-tions, the food, everything. Sometimes

Maria, Colombian refugee in Panama.

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1� refview GUEST EDITORIALIST

GUEST EDITORIALIST

Colombia covers a very large geographical area and shares long borders with Venezuela,

Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Panama. As has been the case for decades, the armed conflict continues to mean that violence is unfortunately part of people’s daily lives and remains the main source of massive human rights violations, as well as breaches of international hu-manitarian law. The dynamics affecting the country’s border areas are complex and various: • The government is undertaking civil and economic activities as well as pro-moting bi-national initiatives in these areas in conjunction with the work of the Fuerza Publica (armed forces includ-ing police) to reinforce public order and state sovereignty. • Armed groups have evolved outside the law and have positioned themselves in border areas to defend their strategic interests and take advantage of eco-nomic activity in these regions, both legal and illegal. In so doing, they have activated a dynamics of conflict in these

regions, where there is ongoing violence as illegal groups seek to control both the territory and the population. • Communities and groups that live in these regions have their own way of life and tend to act independently of the state, although they are affected by the aforementioned violence. Their activities as citizens are influenced by social, economic, cultural and ethnical considerations. The border situation is further com-plicated by the violence instigated by irregular armed groups and confronta-tions between them and the military and police, who are trying to establish full state control over these regions and eradicate illegal crops. As a result, civilian rights have been severely affected, especially in the case of indigenous communities and Afro-Colombians. They have been forcibly displaced and in some instances have fled over the borders to neighbouring countries to seek protection - either asylum or temporary protection - while waiting for the situation to change. Being aware of this situation, the Ombudsman ‘s Office is paying particu-lar attention to border regions. It has a network of staff working at the regional and municipal level in border areas, risks analysts who monitor the impact of the conflict on the civilian population and, more specifically, relies on advisors for an ongoing assessment of the situa-tion along the country’s borders. The border advisors work with the support of UNHCR, allowing us to guar-antee the effectiveness of our mission to promote and defend human rights in regions where the situation is of special concern. Border advisors continuously

monitor border communities, pay visits and carry out humanitarian missions, address complaints and inform people about human rights and international humanitarian law. With the purpose of promoting a culture of peace, they also undertake legal actions to defend citizens’ rights and promote institutional coordination to develop plans to prevent forced displacement and assist commu-nities at risk of displacement or already displaced. The Ombudsman’s Office, in reac-tion to forced displacement and border crossings, has called on national au-thorities to adopt preventive measures. Also, and in the framework of bilateral discussions between Colombia and its neighbours, the Defensoria participates in the elaboration of strategies based on international refugee law to protect the rights of refugees and ensure that any repatriation that may occur is voluntary and takes place in safety and dignity. We undertake our mission certain that making human rights fully effective in practice is the best contribution we can make to achieving peace. Volmar Perez Ortiz Colombia’s Ombudsman

Volmar Perez Ortiz became Colombia’s

Ombudsman in 2004 after eight years of

defending human rights with the Ombuds-

man’s Office. He is also a former advisor of

the Constitutional Assembly, which drafted

Colombia’s current Constitution. In 1999

and 2000 he was a member of the Inter-In-

stitutional Commission for cases of serious

human rights violations. He has published

various works on the 1991 Constitution and

Human Rights.

Human rights in border areas: the work of Colombia’s Ombudsman’s Office

Volmar Perez Ortiz Colombia’s Ombudsman

FROM THE FIELD refview 19

From the Field

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For years, the responsibility for as-sisting Colombia’s three million displaced persons was seen to

fall solely with the national authorities. But with half the displaced population living in the country’s biggest cities and local integration becoming the best durable solution for most of that group, things are beginning to change. Antioquia, Colombia’s second most populated region –and one that’s been severely hit by forced displacement - in May became the first to adopt regional legislation based upon the United Na-tions’ Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and aimed at preventing forced displacement, protect displaced persons and communities at risk and ensure reparation to IDPs. The initiative developed quickly and UNHCR, which provided techni-cal assistance with the legislation, has already begun to support the design of a comprehensive IDP plan for over �0 municipalities in the region. The agency is supporting similar projects in the de-partments of Nariño, Santander, Norte de Santander and Putumayo. One crucial step for local integration is adequate housing. In June, the city of Medellin decided to complement national housing subsidies for displaced families with up to USD 4,000. Bogota, Colombia’s capital, soon adopted a similar plan. Both cities were follow-ing in the steps of Valle del Cauca, the country’s third most populated area. Local authorities’ response to forced displacement continues to vary wildly from one town to the next. Indigenous Awa populations forced to seek ref-uge in two neighbouring towns in the

department of Nariño in July received very different levels of medical and food assistance depending on the receiving municipality. The same happened to peasant populations in two villages in Antioquia in early August. UNHCR continues to work to ensure that local and regional authorities under-stand their own roles in responding to displacement and act accordingly. Mexico refugee Children’s Group Ivonne Gonzalez has been working as the coordinator of a refugee children’s group at the Refugee Park in Mexico City for the past two years on a volun-teer basis. Her work began with visits

to a Colombian refugee family of five, which had to live through the anxiety of adapting to a new country, finding a home, a school and trying to make a living, while struggling to overcome the trauma of persecution back home. She spent many of her weekends with four of the children in particular. Soon, when more refugee and Mexico families came to the park with their children, Ivonne decided to bring all the youngsters together. She read tales to the group, made handicrafts with them and took them to museums and puppet shows. At first, the children were shy and didn’t inter-act much together. It did not take long however before they all realized that

Displaced child in Colombia.

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they had shared similar experiences and learned to trust each other. Soon after, they celebrate their birthdays together, went to the circus and even had a joint exhibition of their own photographs. Ivonne says the experience has marked her for the rest of her life and is delighted to spend so much of her free time with the group. She is inspired by the impact she hopes it will have on their lives. “Not only does it give them a sense of belonging now, but I also re-ally think that you grow up to be the kid you once were. These children have to deal with such terrible experiences. To me it’s inspiring just to think that I might be able to help them discover new pos-sibilities for a brighter future.” She is also pleased to see the ef-fect the group is having on the Mexican children. “It is wonderful to see how they learn to open their eyes to other cultures and to respect differences,” she says enthusiastically.

Opening of new detention center will improve detention conditions of foreigners in Costa rica

All asylum seekers arriving in Costa Rica are immediately documented and enjoy freedom

of movement across the country. The detention of asylum seekers is not a practice – provided that they carry their provisional documentation at all times -, however, a few isolated cases of detained asylum seekers have been reported over the last few years. When this happens, UNHCR and its imple-menting partner ACAI intervene to re-quest the release of the asylum seeker. UNHCR and ACAI also carry out periodic visits to the detention centre for foreign people found in an irregular situ-ation to identify potential asylum seek-ers among the detainees and offer them support and legal advice. This summer, the Costa Rican migration authorities

inaugurated a new detention centre for foreign people in an irregular situation and invited UNHCR, along with other institutions working with foreigners and asylum seekers, to visit the new prem-ises before the official inauguration. The visit was headed by Costa Rica’s Minister of Public Security, Governance and Police, Mr. Fernando Berrocal, and by the Director General for Migrations, Mr. Mario Zamora. During the event, the authorities explained the migration policy of the new Costa Rican govern-ment, which, according to Minister Ber-rocal, “is firmly attached to the Costa Rican traditional respect for the human rights of migrants and refugees”. The new centre is located on the out-skirts of San Jose town centre and can accommodate up 100 people in good conditions. Among the most obvious improvements are the inclusion of family rooms, better facilities for women and men and more spacious and well lit-up common rooms. With the opening of this new build-ing, the old “Quinta Comisaria”, the former detention centre that operated for more than seven years at the heart of Costa Rica´s capital, and which was known for its poor infrastructure and harsh conditions, was closed for good.

According to national migration law, any foreigner found in an irregular situ-ation is taken to the detention centre to await deportation. Foreigners can ask for asylum while in detention, but are kept in the centre while awaiting the result of their Refugee Status De-termination, which under law must be made within �0 days. If refugee status is granted, the person is released and issued with documents.

Refugee children creating their own toys in a workshop at the refugee park in Mexico City.

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pANAMá

Staff Diaryfield visit to refugee Communities in Jaque, Panama.

Thursday, June 22:As we carry our luggage from the plane on the dirt airstrip in Jaque, UNHCR Field Officer Renee Cuijpers and I are greeted by two young refu-gee children and their mother who are heading to Panama City on the return flight. One child’s face is terribly swol-len: he is going to the city to receive medical treatment for a serious illness, thanks to UNHCR’s medical evacua-tion program. This program provides transportation and support for urgent medical cases that cannot receive the specialized treatment they need in this remote town near Panama’s border with Colombia. Before heading into the field to begin our day’s work, we stop at a small restaurant run by a Colombian refugee woman. As she prepares our meal, the woman explains that there is hardly any food left in the village; the boat carrying supplies from Panama City has been delayed for several days due to bad weather. During our home visits over the next couple of days, the refugees often speak of the lack of food in the town and their eager antici-pation of the boat’s arrival. Life is not easy for Colombian refugees and those under Temporary Humanitarian Protection (THP) in this region of Panama near the Colombian border. Jaque is an isolated town surrounded by thick forest, and those awaiting determination of their legal status are not permitted to leave the area without special government per-mission. The community is dependent on the food supplies that arrive by boat from Panama City and whatever other food they can provide for them-

selves through fishing and small-scale agriculture. Later that day, we meet a friendly Colombian refugee couple and their children. The father asks Renee if he and his family must remain refugees for-ever, or if they will ever have the right to a more permanent legal status in Pana-ma. The answer to his question is un-certain at this point, as the Panamanian government has yet to grant permanent residency to long-term refugees.

UNHCR continues to advocate for the regularization of status for refugees who have lived in Panama for many years, including refugees from Nicara-gua and El Salvador, who have been liv-ing in the country for more than twenty years. UNHCR remains optimistic that the government will grant permanent residency to those refugees who arrived so long ago, as well as to more recent refugee arrivals, many of whom are Co-lombians.

Two refugee children from the Jaque Community.

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group must stay in Jaque for the time being. We spend the afternoon visiting the housing projects that UNHCR is sup-porting in Jaque. These basic wooden houses will provide more permanent shelter for several indigenous Colom-bian families that have been living in the town since �000. The families are cur-rently renting houses through UNHCR’s rental subsidy program but will soon have their own homes thanks to this project.

Saturday, June 24:After two days of visiting refugees and meetings with UNHCR’s implementing partners, we arise early to catch our flight back to the main UNHCR office in Panama City. A Colombian refugee carefully navigates our boat through the breaking waves and carries us safely downriver to a neighbouring town where the airstrip is. When we get to the shore, we see a pile of food and supplies that has just been unloaded: the long-awaited boat carrying supplies from Panama has finally arrived. I smile, knowing that when the boat makes its next stop to deliver food to Jaque, it will be a day of celebration for the refugees, indigenous groups, and locals living to-gether in this small Panamanian town. By Heidi Boas in Jaque

Heidi Boas is a law student at Boalt Hall

School of Law at the University of California

at Berkeley. She worked as an intern this

summer at the UNHCR office in Panama

City, and is pursuing a career in refugee and

immigration law.

Colombian refugee child in Panama.

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friday, June 23:This morning we met with a group of more than forty indigenous Colombians of the Wounaan ethnicity. This group of indigenous leaders and their families fled their territory in the Colombian depart-ment of Choco in May of this year after two of their leaders were murdered by members of an irregular armed group and the rest were placed on a hit list. The families arrived in Jaque seeking international protection and are currently living together in one basic wooden house along the riverside, awaiting de-termination of their legal status by the

Panamanian government. The Panama-nian government recently interviewed the group but has yet to determine whether it will grant them permanent refugee status in Panama or only Tem-porary Humanitarian Protection, a status that provides fewer legal rights. The leader of the group tells us that the families would like to move to a re-gion of Panama where other members of the Wounaan ethnicity are living. They feel they will be able to integrate more easily into a community that shares their background and customs. Due to their undetermined status, however, the

WWW.ACNUR.ORG refview ��

UNHCR’s web site is the agency’s main tool for the protection and the promo-tion of international refugee law in the Americas and Spain. It offers up-to date information to Spanish speakers on refugees and other people of concern to UNHCR across the world and especially in Latin America.

www.acnur.org highlights the extent of Latin America’s developments on international protection and its contribu-tion to the gradual development of inter-national refugee law. It seeks to consoli-date the agency’s institutional memory through documents and materials pro-duced in Spanish on refugees and other people of concern to UNHCR.

The largest on-line library on refugees and human rights in Spanish can be found www.acnur.org. Juan Carlos Murillo in Costa Rica

UNHCR on line in Spanish

web StructureVisitors may find varied information on

UNHCR’s mandate divided in the follow-ing eleven sections: 1. General Information�. News �. Protecting Refugees, a section por-traying UNHCR activities in favour of refugees, internally displaced persons and the stateless. 4. One special section on Refugees in America5. One section on the Executive com-mittee6. Publications 7. Special events�. Related sites, with links to other sources of information on refugees and human rights

9. One special section to aid refugees: “How to help the refugees”.10. A “legal database” that contains regulations and legislation from coun-tries in the region, as well as from Spain, on refugees, human rights and national jurisprudence. It also establishes pa-rameters and standards in human rights at both at the world and regional level available only on the ACNUR web page. 11. A database on “Country of Origin In-formation”, with documents and reports from different sources on the following countries: Colombia, Cuba, Haiti and Guatemala.

www.ACNUR.oRg

Up-to-date information

to promote a greater

awareness of the plight

of uprooted people

and their humanitarian needs.

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UNHCr Geneva, Bureau for the Americas94 Rue MontbrillantCH-1�0� Geneva Case Postale �500CH-1�11 Genève � Dépôt+41 �� 7�9 �111+41 �� 7�9 7�15

UNHCr BrazilSHIS QL �4, Conjunto 4, Casa 16, Lago Sul, Brasília - DF, 71665-0�5, Brasil Tel: +55 61 ��67-41�7Fax: +55 61 ��67-�9�9E-mails:brabr@unhcr.org

UNHCr Canada��0 Albert StreetSuite 401Ottawa, Ontario KIP 5G�Tel: +1 61� ��� 09 09+1 61� ��� �6 91Fax: +1 61� ��0 1� 55 Email: canot@unhcr.org

UNHCr ColombiaCalle 114 No. 9 – 01 Of. 601 Torre A – Edificio TeleportBogotáTel: +57 1 65�0600 Fax: + 57 1 65�060� E-mail: colbo@unhcr.org

UNHCr Costa rica Edificio Torre del Este 5to pisoBarrio Dent, frente a la facultadde Derecho de la UCRSan JoséTel. +506 ��4 �0�1Fax: +506 ��4 4�91 E-mail: cossa@unhcr.org

UNHCr ecuador Avenida Amazonas ���9 y la GranjaEdificio Naciones UnidasPiso �, QuitoTel: +59� � �460 �7�+59� � �46� �59Fax: +59� � �460 ��0E-mail: ecuqu@unhcr.org

UNHCr PanamaCalle Gaillard, Edificio �1�-BCiudad del Saber, Apartado 0�4�-0��95,Balboa, AncónRepública de PanamáTel. +507 �17 16�0Fax: +507 �17 16�� Email: panpa@unhcr.org

regional Office for the United States and the Caribbean1775 K Street, NWSuite �00Washington, D.C. �0006Tel. +�0� �96 5191E-mail: usawa@unhcr.org

regional Office for Southern Latin AmericaCerrito ��6 Piso 10Buenos Aires 1010Tel. +54 11 4�15 �17�Fax +54 11 4�15 4�5�E-mail: argbu@unhcr.org

regional Office for Mexico, Cuba and Central AmericaPresidente Masaryk �9-6Chapultepec Morales11570, México, D.F.Tel. +5� 55 5�6� 9�64Fax. +5� 55 5�50 9�0�E-mail: mexme@unhcr.org

regional Office for venezuela, Peru, Guyana and Suriname Parque Cristal, Torre Oeste, Piso 4Oficina 4-5, Los Palos GrandesApto Postal 69045 Caracas 106�-ACaracas, VenezuelaTel. +5� �1� ��6 ����Fax +5� �1� ��6 96�7E-mail: roven@unhcr.org

The UN Refugee Agency