Families on Colombia's border with Venezuela have been displaced by illegal groups trying to fill the vacuum left by the departure of Farc rebels, the UN says.

Officials said 96 families in the northern region of Norte de Santander had fled their homes.

Some crossed the border into Venezuela and others went to refuges in local towns.

The UN said tension was high and they feared more families could flee.

According to the UN, various groups operate or have operated in the region: the Farc, Colombia's second largest guerrilla group, the ELN, and criminal and ex-paramilitary groups.

Norte de Santander has emerged as the country's main hub for coca cultivation.

Last week, peasant farmer organisations in the region, around Catatumbo, blocked the demobilisation of Farc units saying that their departure would leave them unprotected as the paramilitary groups gathered nearby.

There have also been reports by local communities of an increased presence of criminal groups in at least three other departments: Antioquia, Uraba and Choco.

The Farc has largely left towns and rural areas it occupied and most of the fighters have gathered in 26 concentration zones under the watch of a multinational commission.

The Colombian military have moved into some territories in Tolima and Huila departments but, according to the government's Peace and Reconciliation Foundation, it is proving difficult to take over in more isolated regions because of the problems of terrain and lack of access.

The Farc is expected to hand over its arms by the end of May.

It has agreed to co-operate with investigations into drug trafficking and war crimes.

The armed conflict in Colombia has resulted in more than 220,00 deaths and 40,000 people missing over the past 50 years.

All sides have been accused of war crimes including massacres, torture and rape.

More than six million people have been displaced - the second highest number in the world after Syria.

And 11,000 people have been killed or maimed by land mines - a causality rate second only to Afghanistan. </s> Image copyright AFP Image caption Farc guerrillas have almost all arrived in their concentration zones across the country

Families on Colombia's border with Venezuela have been displaced by criminal former paramilitary groups trying to fill the vacuum left by the departure of Farc rebels, the UN says.

Officials said 96 families in the northern region of Norte de Santander had fled their homes.

Some crossed the border into Venezuela and others went to refuges in local Colombian towns, the UN said.

The government has denied any families have been forced across the border.

Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin was quoted by local media as saying there was "no certainty of any such displacement" although she conceded that there had been some internal displacement in the Norte de Santander area.

Image copyright Reuters Image caption The Colombian military is reported to be finding it difficult to take over in more isolated regions because of the problems of terrain and lack of access

The UN said tension was high in the area and they feared more families could flee.

According to the UN, various groups operate or have operated in the region: the Farc, Colombia's second largest guerrilla group, the ELN, and criminal and former paramilitary groups.

Officials said people are fleeing because illegal armed groups are trying to take over the mining and cocaine trade which had provided the Farc with an income.

Norte de Santander has emerged as the country's main hub for coca cultivation.

Last week peasant farmer organisations in the region around Catatumbo blocked the demobilisation of Farc units saying that their departure would leave them unprotected as the paramilitary groups gathered nearby.

There have also been reports by local communities of an increased presence of criminal groups in at least three other departments: Antioquia, Uraba and Choco.

The Farc - which signed a peace accord with the government last year - has largely left towns and rural areas it occupied and most of the fighters have gathered in 26 concentration zones under the watch of a multinational commission.

The Colombian military is finding it difficult to take control in more isolated regions because of the problems of terrain and lack of access, the government's Peace and Reconciliation Foundation says.

The Farc is expected to hand over its arms by the end of May.

It has agreed to co-operate with investigations into drug trafficking and war crimes.

The armed conflict in Colombia has resulted in more than 220,000 deaths and 40,000 people missing over the past 50 years.

All sides have been accused of war crimes including massacres, torture and rape.

More than six million people have been displaced - the second highest number in the world after Syria. </s> After a 64-year-old activist, Porofirio Jaramillo, was dragged from his home and murdered by four men on motorbikes, the head of the Colombian government’s victims unit did not mince his words. The country was facing a massacre in slow motion, he warned.

The attack on Jaramillo was the 17th murder of a community leader since Colombia signed a peace deal with the Farc (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia ) rebels last December. The agreement won President Juan Manuel Santos a Nobel peace prize, for offering a country racked by half a century of war the prospect of security again.But for many activists, politicians and campaigners seeking to shape the new Colombia, peace has proved more dangerous than war, as they have been picked off by assassinations. The killings grew more frequent even as the government and guerrillas lurched slowly towards a deal, with about 100 murdered last year as the final negotiations were hammered out.

“We are extremely worried about these acts, because the truth is that social leaders are being massacred,” said Alan Jara, who heads the Victims Unit seeking reparations for the eight million people caught up in the war. “Their work is completely legal, and we should be providing them with state protection for their lives and conditions so they can continue with their work, in pursuit of better living conditions for their communities,” he told journalists after news of Jaramillo’s killing was reported.

Violence is spreading particularly fast in areas abandoned by guerrillas under the peace deal because the promised state security forces have not arrived.

There is little clarity about who is behind the killings, but areas once held by guerrillas are often places where illegal mining or farming of coca – the raw ingredient for cocaine – make a tempting target for armed gangs or dissident rebels who refused to hand in their guns.

And the pace of the killings is feeding fears here that a government which battled long and hard for a peace deal is being dangerously lax about making paper plans a reality.

“They are leaving a power vacuum, even though this was anticipated. The government said they were going to move the armed forces into these zones and they haven’t. And the people in these areas are very concerned,” said Marc Chernick, director of the centre for Latin American studies at Georgetown University in Washington.

“This is critical to consolidating the peace agreement. If they can’t bring control and stop the assassinations it’s going to be very hard for this process to move forward. I think everyone understands this, but yet we are not seeing the government responding adequately.”

Hanging over the country is the memory of another peace deal and another massacre 30 years ago. Around 3,000 members of the leftwing Unión Patriótica were murdered, effectively sinking that agreement and leaving a deep scar on the national psyche.

Human rights groups are certain the killings are intended to “intimidate society as the peace process advanced in Colombia, and political alternatives increase,” the Centre for Historical Memory noted in a response to a round of killings in November, including a grandmother gunned down on the school run.

The headline of their statement bluntly spelt out worries that another peace deal could be at risk. “Don’t let a genocide like the UP killings happen again,” it warned.

At the heart of much of the violence are land rights and the country’s multi-billion-dollar cocaine industry, which for years helped fund the Farc. During the years of war large swaths of land were seized by ranchers, drug traffickers and armed groups themselves, who have little interest in relinquishing it.

The peace deals envisages the dismantling of the drugs trade, with the Farc helping persuade farmers in areas it once controlled to switch to other crops, and the return of land to farmers who once owned it.

But armed criminal groups are eager to take over the trade where the government does not replace Farc soldiers rapidly enough. Some are already reportedly trying to sign up former guerrillas with monthly salaries three times their government reintegration stipend.

In one corner of the country, Chocó, the security vacuum had such devastating consequences that in November residents begged the country’s only remaining guerrilla group, the ELN, to take control of the area left by the Farc, Spain’s El País newspaper reported.

The Catholic church has also weighed in. Earlier this month the bishop of Apartado, a town on the north coast, put out a fierce statement warning the government that whole swathes of the country were at risk of spiralling out of control.

“We can see the region is being consumed by forced displacement, drug trafficking, youth gangs, environmental destruction and an increase in illegal mining,” Bishop Hugo Alberto Torres Marín said.

“We cannot forget what has happened in the past and threatens to repeat itself, the tragic history of systematic assassination of so many people committed to bringing social and political change.”

The government has promised to send nearly 70,000 troops to areas once held by the Farc. But it is still not clear when they will be deployed and in the areas at risk there is a sense that time is running out.

“Ultimately the problem is one of time, and a question of who has more initiative. While the government forces are adapting to the new situation, armed groups are in an atmosphere conducive to growing their thriving illegal businesses,” the Foundation for Peace and Reconciliation said.

“Either everything that sounds so good on paper must be put into practice, or it will be too late for many areas, where a new enemy is lurking.” </s> Illegal armed groups have forced some 40,000 people to flee their homes as they fight for control of drug trafficking routes in Colombia's Catatumbo region bordering Venezuela, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.

The international watchdog published a 64-page report on abuses committed against civilians by armed groups in the mountainous area. The situation reflects the significant security challenges that Colombia faces after the government signed a 2016 peace deal with the FARC guerrilla group, leaving a void that has been filled by smaller armed groups that have moved into Catatumbo and other remote areas unleashing a new wave of drug-fuelled violence.

In the report called "The War in Catatumbo," Human Rights Watch says three armed groups are fighting over drug routes and coca plantations abandoned by FARC rebels in the region, including the Popular Liberation Army, the National Liberation Army and a small group of former FARC fighters.

These armed groups have expelled thousands of rural dwellers from their homes, murdered community leaders and forcibly recruited children into their ranks, according to the report, which also includes interviews with children who have been forced to work harvesting coca leaves, the raw material for cocaine.

"The 2016 peace accord between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia presented a landmark opportunity to halt the serious abuses and atrocities associated with a decades-long armed conflict," the report says.

"Yet in practice, the government does not exercise effective control over all territory in particular areas reclaimed from the FARC."

Catatumbo is about the size of Rhode Island. It borders Venezuela and in 2017 it produced about 15 per cent of Colombia's coca crop, according to United Nations figures. The mountainous region has been used by drug traffickers as a staging point for exporting cocaine.

Human Rights Watch accused Colombia's government of "not meeting its obligations" to protect civilians in the area, which include an estimated 25,000 Venezuelan migrants. The organization said migrants fleeing economic hardship in Venezuela have been forced into sex work in Catatumbo and are also harvesting coca leaves in a desperate bid to feed their families.

The report said there were 231 homicides in Catatumbo last year or twice as many as before the peace deal with the FARC was signed. Only two members of armed groups have been convicted for murders in Catatumbo over the past three years.

"As armed groups fight for the void left by the FARC in Catatumbo, hundreds of civilians have been caught in the conflict," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of the group.

Human Rights Watch is calling on the Colombia government to increase the number of investigators working on cases of forced displacement, murders and disappearances in the region. It also urged the Colombian government to ensure Venezuelan migrants attain legal status so that they can find work in safer parts of the country. </s> BOGOTA (Reuters) - Fighting between three armed groups for control of territory and drug trafficking in northeastern Colombia has exposed some 300,000 civilians to potential rights abuses, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.

Rebels from the National Liberation Army (ELN), dissident fighters from Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) who refused to demobilize under a peace deal and the Los Pelusos crime gang are all present in the Catatumbo region, near the border with Venezuela, the rights group said.

"In Catatumbo a war to the death has been triggered between irregular armed groups. This war has the civilian population as prisoners, as captives," Human Rights Watch Americas director Jose Miguel Vivanco told journalists. "These are poor rural people who haven't seen the Colombian state for decades and who are exposed to grave abuses."

People living in the region, including more than 25,000 Venezuelans who have fled the economic and political crisis in their own country, are at risk of murder, forced disappearance, sexual violence, forced recruitment of minors, landmines, displacement and kidnapping, Vivanco said.

Migrants are especially vulnerable, Vivanco said, adding that some Venezuelan children are involved in harvesting coca, the base ingredient in cocaine, while migrant women may be forced into sex work that pays them as little as $2.

Armed groups are known to target desperate Venezuelans for recruitment as they traverse the porous 2,219-km (1,380-mile) border between the two countries.

Vivanco said the Colombian government should invest in roads, education, healthcare and job creation in the region, where military forces number more than 5,600 and police 800.

The demobilization of the FARC in 2017 left a power vacuum in restive regions around the Andean country, sparking bloody competition between remaining armed groups for control of lucrative drug trafficking and illegal mining operations.

"Within Colombia and outside Colombia it is probable there exists the impression that the situation was resolved with the signing of the deal and that the country is in peace," Vivanco said. "The country is at war in Catatumbo!" </s> BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Officials say roughly 6,900 members Colombia's largest rebel group have arrived in special transition zones to begin disarming, completing a key step in a revised peace deal that seeks to end more than five decades of armed conflict.

A statement issued Saturday by the peace process' Monitoring and Verification Mechanism said the final 300 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia fighters had arrived at a zone in Caqueta province.

Thousands of combatants, traveling from their jungle camps by foot, vehicles or boat, have gathered in recent weeks in more than 20 demobilization areas where they will begin turning over their weapons to United Nations-sponsored monitors.

Carolina Azevedo, chief of communications for the U.N mission in Colombia, confirmed that the movement of the rebel fighters to the zones had been completed.

President Juan Manuel Santos signed a revised peace agreement with the FARC in November after an initial accord was rejected by voters in a referendum. </s> Three groups are fighting over drug routes and coca plantations as 40,000 have fled their homes, says Human Rights Watch

Illegal armed groups have forced about 40,000 people to flee their homes as they fight for control of drug trafficking routes in Colombia’s Catatumbo region bordering Venezuela, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.

The 64-page report highlights the significant security challenges that Colombia still faces after the government signed a 2016 peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) guerrilla group. That deal and a weak state presence has left a void in Catatumbo and other remote areas that has been filled by smaller armed groups, which are unleashing a new wave of drug-fueled violence.

Peace is war as armed groups roil Colombia's lawless border region Read more

In the report, called The War in Catatumbo, Human Rights Watch says three armed groups are fighting over drug routes and coca plantations abandoned by Farc rebels in the region, including the Popular Liberation Army, the National Liberation Army and a small group of former Farc fighters.

These armed groups have expelled thousands of rural dwellers from their homes, murdered community leaders and forcibly recruited children into their ranks, according to the report, which also includes interviews with children who have been forced to work harvesting coca leaves, the raw material for cocaine.

“The 2016 peace accord between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia presented a landmark opportunity to halt the serious abuses and atrocities associated with a decades-long armed conflict,” the report says. “Yet in practice, the government does not exercise effective control over all territory in particular areas reclaimed from the Farc.”

Catatumbo is about the size of Rhode Island. It borders Venezuela and in 2017 it produced about 15% of Colombia’s coca crop, according to UN figures. The mountainous region has been used by drug traffickers as a staging point for exporting cocaine.

Human Rights Watch accused Colombia’s government of “not meeting its obligations” to protect civilians in the area, which include an estimated 25,000 Venezuelan migrants. The organization said migrants fleeing economic hardship in Venezuela have been forced into sex work in Catatumbo and are also harvesting coca leaves in a desperate bid to feed their families.

The report said there were 231 homicides in Catatumbo last year or twice as many as before the peace deal with the Farc was signed. Only two members of armed groups have been convicted for murders in Catatumbo over the past three years.

“As armed groups fight for the void left by the Farc in Catatumbo, hundreds of civilians have been caught in the conflict,” said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of the group.

Human Rights Watch is calling on the Colombia government to increase the number of investigators working on cases of forced displacement, murders and disappearances in the region. </s> 53 years after its first combat, Colombia’s oldest and largest rebel group, the FARC, have completed its disarmament process, the United Nations announced Monday.

According to the United Nations, the FARC’s approximately 7,000 demobilized guerrillas have surrendered 7,132 arms.

The weapons are now stored in UN-controlled containers located in the 26 demobilization, disarmament and reintegration (DDR) camps where the guerrillas where the guerrillas have been staying since September last year.

President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño, known by his nom-de-guerre “Timochenko” are expected to attend a ceremony on Tuesday to celebrate the successful disarmament of the country’s longest-living guerrilla group.

The only weapons left in hands of FARC members are those in the hands of guards maintaining security in these camps. Also these weapons should be surrendered to the UN before the agreed deadline of August 1.

All other guerrillas that have handed in their weapons have received certificates, allowing them to take part in reintegration programs.

Apart from the disarmament of the guerrillas, the UN, the FARC and state forces have removed or detonated 77 of approximately 900 weapons caches hidden in the jungles and mountains of Colombia where the FARC used to be active, the international organization said.

Some 1,600 FARC militia members, not all of whom were armed, have also reported at the camp to receive a certificate they are now no longer a member of an illegal armed group.

Guerrillas who have deserted or militias members who have failed to report themselves will no longer be able to take part in the peace process and will be targeted by the Colombian security forces.

Of the FARC’s approximately 50 fronts, six have refused to take part in the peace process. The dissident groups are primarily active in the coca-rich south and southwest of the country.

These are the FARC dissident groups Colombia’s authorities must confront

With the full disarmament of the FARC’s guerrillas, Colombia’s peace process has successfully finished a historic phase of the country’s ongoing peace process that seeks an and to more than half a century of political violence that has left more than 265,000 Colombians dead, tens of thousands missing and 7 million displaced.

The peace process has been plagued by a number of delays, partly due to government failures to timely facilitate the disarmament and disinformation campaigns by the country’s hard-right opposition, which — like the FARC — is expected to respond for tens of thousands of human rights violations.

Additionally, the process has been stained by the ongoing assassination of social leaders and members of FARC members, and an apparent spoiler attack on a Bogota mall little over a week ago.

The following phase of the peace process includes a transitional justice tribunal that will call an unknown number of FARC guerrillas and militia members, 24,500 state officials and almost 13,000 private individuals and companies to respond for the tens of thousands of war crimes committed by the multiple parties during the armed conflict.

was last modified: by </s> Illegal armed groups have forced some 40,000 people to flee their homes as they fight for control of drug trafficking routes in Colombia's Catatumbo region bordering Venezuela, Human Rights Watch said yesterday. The international watchdog published a 64-page report on abuses committed against civilians by armed groups in the mountainous area. The situation reflects the significant security challenges that Colombia faces after the government signed a 2016 peace deal with the FARC guerrilla group, leaving a void that has been filled by smaller armed groups that have moved into Catatumbo and other remote areas unleashing a new wave of drug-fueled violence.

In the report called "The War in Catatumbo," Human Rights Watch says three armed groups are fighting over drug routes and coca plantations abandoned by FARC rebels in the region, including the Popular Liberation Army, the National Liberation Army and a small group of former FARC fighters. These armed groups have expelled thousands of rural dwellers from their homes, murdered community leaders and forcibly recruited children into their ranks, according to the report, which also includes interviews with children who have been forced to work harvesting coca leaves, the raw material for cocaine.

Catatumbo is about the size of Rhode Island. It borders Venezuela and in 2017 it produced about 15 percent of Colombia's coca crop, according to U.N. figures. The mountainous region has been used by drug traffickers as a staging point for exporting cocaine.
According to the United Nations, as many as 96 families have been displaced by criminal gangs who are filling the vacuum left by FARC rebels in Colombia after the latter signed a peace deal with the government last year.