Tag Archives: Colombia

By Paula Fynboh

There’s a cemetery near Montgomery, Minnesota (USA) where my parents will be buried.  It’s the same cemetery where my grandparents were buried.  And it is the same place where my great-grandparents found their final resting place.  What does this have to do with displacement?  It offers me a physical connection to my roots, something many internally displaced people in many countries do not have.

I recently sat down with Maria Isabelle, one of the participants of the Bogota Wage Subsidy Project (BWSP), to hear her story.  The BWSP is a start-up organization working with women displaced by conflict in Colombia to build personal equity and transition from informal to formal employment. Read More »

Guest Roaster Aliza Amlani shares her experiences from Colombia.

A few weeks ago I began reading “Writing on the edge”, a book about Medicins Sans Frontiers (MSF) missions Worldwide. One reporter was in Phnom Penh in Cambodia, an area rife with malaria and unexploded landmines planted by the Khmer Rouge. As I sat sipping on a cup of tea in the comfort of my own home, I wondered what it must be like to put yourself in such a dangerous situation. Three weeks later that is exactly what I did.

I have been living in Bogotá for 3 months now, working at an NGO. One evening a call from a colleague informed me that we were going to carry out monitoring and evaluation of projects in the department of Meta, only a few hours by car from Bogota but a place that feels like a world away. It is well known as the “home” of the FARC, the left wing guerillas that have terrorized citizens for decades. Cocaine plantations and a close proximity to the capital make Meta a hotspot for guerilla activity. Like where there is smoke there is fire, where there are guerillas there are paramilitaries, the deadly opposition right wingers. These two groups fiercely battle for land and cocaine plantations, destroying anything and anyone that stands in their way. Read More »