Drug War Displacements

Crisis Facing Colombians Is Called Worst in Hemisphere

Colombia's drug wars have created the largest crisis for civilians in the Americas, driving two million people from their homes and threatening Indian tribes with extinction, a United nations official said on Monday.

The official, Jan Egeland, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator, said the country was mired in debt and reluctant to divert military funds to an army of uprooted people escaping the fighting or forced off their land by cocaine traffickers.

"Colombia is therefore by far the biggest humanitarian catastrophe of the Western Hemisphere," he said at a news conference.

"It has the biggest number of killings in the Western Hemisphere. It's the biggest humanitarian problem, human rights problem, the biggest conflict in the Western hemisphere."

He said that only Sudan and Congo had more displaced people.