Colombia: A year of supporting victims

11-04-2014 Feature

The hope of starting afresh and leaving behind a conflict that has spanned five decades contrasts sharply with the grim reality of daily life for victims of the conflict in Colombia. Every day, thousands of people are killed, go missing, are forced to flee their homes or end up trapped in their own neighbourhoods because of the invisible boundaries imposed by armed groups. In 2013, the ICRC helped over 235,000 of them.

Jordi Raich, head of the ICRC delegation in Colombia, describes the human cost of the violence, the challenges faced by the ICRC, and the outlook for a country anticipating the end of the conflict but facing the prospect of ongoing violence waged by criminal gangs.

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