Forced internal displacement caused by Colombia’s internal armed conflict constitutes one of the country’s main challenges nowadays, with more than 6.6 million victims during the last four decades and nearly 225,000 new... [ view full abstract ]
Forced internal displacement caused by Colombia’s internal armed conflict constitutes one of the country’s main challenges nowadays, with more than 6.6 million victims during the last four decades and nearly 225,000 new cases just in 2015 (UNHCR, 2016. p. 5). According to Refugees International (2012), the city of Bogotá holds nearly two thirds of the grand total of internally displaced people in Colombia, 65% of whom are peasants who migrated from the countryside. During the last few decades the Colombian government has incorporated several institutional tools with the purpose of assisting and repairing this vast universe of victims. In parallel, during this time period the Colombian government has designed and implemented several projects with the purpose of assisting vulnerable communities —more broadly defined, but including internally displaced people— in cities like Bogotá. Some of these programs have focused on the implementation of Urban Agriculture (UA) practices to assist these communities. This research attempted to do a multi-dimensional sustainability analysis of the effects of UA practices on the livelihoods of internally displaced peasants residing in Bogota, by using a qualitative approach, involving semi-structured interviews, focus groups and participant observation with two communities of internally displaced peasants living in San Cristóbal (a neighborhood of Bogotá).
The research concluded that a. UA has traditionally been considered by scholars to be a merely socio-economic dynamic, nonetheless it also has a profound symbolic impact on the lives of internally displaced people and their process of healing the wounds of armed conflict and displacement. This symbolic aspect has not been explored adequately in the literature. b. By understanding displacement not only as a social dynamic but as an identity in constant transition, it was possible to observe that the particular context of the internally displaced communities plays an important role in the way they identify themselves and interact with local institutions. c. By analyzing UA activities from a holistic sustainable development framework —thus taking into account social, economic, environmental and cultural elements—, it was possible to identify the multiple benefits that UA has brought to these communities. These include access to low cost, highly nutritious, organic food, as well as the spatial relationship between peasant and land, and the way spaces of UA became safe places where internally displaced people can communicate with others they conceive as equals, allowing them to share their life stories and entering into a realm of catharsis, thus healing their pain while also being able to use their traditional knowledge and cultural backgrounds to grow crops, feel re-empowered and contribute to the notion of community inside their neighborhoods. This last point relates to the main theme of the conference as it poses a bottom-up view of local initiatives towards sustainable development while aiming to reframe UA as a plausible tool for the assistance and reparation for internally displaced people, the victims of the armed conflict in Colombia.
References:
Refugees International. (2012, December). IDP’s report in Colombia.
UNHCR. (2016). Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID).
