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JUST Response
country factsheets: COLOMBIA
REPUBLIC OF COLOMBIA
- Basic
facts
- Head
of state & prime minister: Alvaro Uribe Velez
- Vice
president: Francisco Santos
- Population:
44 million.
- Population
growth rate: 1.53%.
- Population
below poverty line: 55%.
- Religions:
Roman Catholic 90%.
- Total
area: 1,138,910 sq km.
- Currency:
Colombian peso (COP) - US$ 1 = COP 2,926 (July 2004).
- Natural
resources: oil, natural gas, coal, gold, silver, copper, emeralds.
- World's
leading cultivator of coca and supplier of 90% of cocaine to US.
- One
of the world's largest suppliers of heroin.
-
- Persistent problems
- Four decades of civil conflict.
- Drug trafficking.
- Sharp divide between rich and poor.
- Kidnappings, killings and internally
displaced people.
- Kiilling of human
rights defenders, peace activists and trade unionists.
- World's most dangerous country for
journalists (over 120 killed in the 1990s).
-
- Recent human rights violations
- Increasing atrocities by rightwing paramilitaries
against human rights activists and farm workers.
- In 2003, over 3,000 civilians killed
for political motives, 2,200 kidnappings and 600 disappearances.
- Increasing failure to prosecute
high-ranking military and paramilitary for human rights
violations.
- Over 70% of politically related killings
and disappearances ascribed to paramilitary.
- Constitution moving towards consolidation of
impunity in human rights violations.
- On October 6
2003, Colombia received US$5 million in military aid after
agreeing not to surrender US nationals accused of genocide, crimes
against humanity or war crimes to the International Criminal
Court.
-
- Important
dates
- 1525:
Start of Spanish conquest.
- 1810:
Independence from Spain.
- 1819:
Defeat of Spanish by Simon Bolivar and formation of Gran Colombia.
- 1830:
Dissolution of Gran Colombia.
- 1899-1903:
120,000 die in civil war (The War of the 1,000 Days) between
Liberals and Conservatives.
- 1948-57:
300,000 die in civil war.
- 1964:
Foundation of National Liberation Army (ELN) and Maoist People's
Liberation Army (EPL).
- 1966:
Foundation of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
- 1991:
New Colombian constitution.
- 2000:
Plan Colombia launched with US$1 billion in US military aid to
fight drug-trafficking and guerrilla.
[More information will be added at future
updates]
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