When a Marxist rebel group told Julio Roberto Pedraza to hand over his land or his two sons would be forced into its ranks, Pedraza and his family of 14 piled into the first vehicle passing by -- a truck hauling firewood to the nation's capital.
They arrived in Bogota from their village in southwest Colombia with nothing but the shirts on their backs and spent the next two years in a tin shack, scraping a living through odd jobs.
Like tens of thousands of other families in Bogota displaced by the nation's civil war, one of their biggest troubles is that they don't have identity cards or papers -- without which they can't get a proper job or qualify for emergency assistance, since the state doesn't formally know they exist.
This month, though, the Bogota mayor's office and the UN took a step toward ending their legal limbo with a series of pilot programs to document displaced families in some of Bogota's poorest and most violent neighborhoods.
Pedraza, 37, and his family stood in long lines in a dusty school yard in the Ciudad Bolivar slum last week to take free blood tests and photographs before providing a signed testimony of their flight from violence, all of which is required to receive documentation.
Recent legislation obliges authorities to accept their testimony on good faith because most don't dare return to their homes to find proof of their origins.
Pedraza hopes that with papers, he will build a better life.
"I can't feed my family," said Pedraza, a small weathered man who still prefers to wear farm garments and rubber boots. "I hope the state will be able to help me a little bit."
A 40-year-old civil war in Colombia that pits two leftist rebel groups against right-wing paramilitary fighters and government forces has displaced between 2 and 3 million people, about 8 percent of the population, according to the United Nations.
Nearly 20,000 families forced from their homes make their way to Bogota's slums every year. That prompted Mayor Luis Eduardo Garzon to declare a state of emergency in refuge-flooded Ciudad Bolivar earlier this year.
The government increased efforts to provide welfare and health services to refugees after a Colombian court in January ordered President Alvaro Uribe to fulfill a promise to address the issue. But it's a logistical and financial nightmare.
In Ciudad Bolivar, few people know their rights. Even fewer have the money to pay for documents recognizing their refugee status -- or even their very existence.
"They have to get blood tests -- that's 10,000 pesos (US$4). They have to get photographs -- that's anything from 5,000 (US$2) to 10,000 pesos (US$4)," said Zandra Munoz, director of City Hall's refugee outreach effort. "When you're looking at a family with five kids or more, they can't even afford the bus fare to get to the registrar's office."
And for those who do register, there is a two-year waiting list for emergency assistance, which then provides three months of food, shelter, education and social security.
An agreement signed earlier this year by the government, local authorities and international organizations simplified and sped up the documentation process, paving the way for the pilot projects in Ciudad Bolivar and elsewhere.
Aldo Morales of the United Nations refugee agency said the program was hugely popular and hopes it will eventually be repeated across the country.
"We will probably register around 2,000 people," says Morales. "But for every thousand that come today we know there are thousands that we've missed."
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
CHEER ON: Students were greeted by citizens who honked their car horns or offered them food and drinks, while taxi drivers said they would give marchers a lift home Hundreds of students protesting graft they blame for 15 deaths in a building collapse on Friday marched through Serbia to the northern city of Novi Sad, where they plan to block three Danube River bridges this weekend. They received a hero’s welcome from fellow students and thousands of local residents in Novi Said after arriving on foot in their two-day, 80km journey from Belgrade. A small red carpet was placed on one of the bridges across the Danube that the students crossed as they entered the city. The bridge blockade planned for yesterday is to mark three months since a huge concrete construction
DIVERSIFY: While Japan already has plentiful access to LNG, a pipeline from Alaska would help it move away from riskier sources such as Russia and the Middle East Japan is considering offering support for a US$44 billion gas pipeline in Alaska as it seeks to court US President Donald Trump and forestall potential trade friction, three officials familiar with the matter said. Officials in Tokyo said Trump might raise the project, which he has said is key for US prosperity and security, when he meets Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba for the first time in Washington as soon as next week, the sources said. Japan has doubts about the viability of the proposed 1,287km pipeline — intended to link fields in Alaska’s north to a port in the south, where
RSS