Colombia

Helping displaced families gain access to healthcare and education

Active in Colombia since 1979, Terre des hommes (Tdh) runs projects for community empowerment, providing food and psychosocial support and is fighting against sexual exploitation. In 2010, almost 6,000 people benefited from the activities.

Context

Colombia is the country with the third largest population in Latin America, after Brazil and Mexico. Since the 1960s, the country has been living in a state of continuous armed conflict involving government troops, left-wing insurgents and right-wing paramilitaries that are nowadays reorganised in criminal gangs. The conflict escalated in the 1990s, fuelled by the cocaine trade. Today Colombia is still the world’s largest producer of coca and coca derivatives. Violence has lead millions of Colombians to flee to neighbouring countries or to safer places within the country.
Although Colombia is the fourth largest economy in Latin America, wealth is distributed very unevenly. There is a rich elite on the one side, and the majority of the population living in abject poverty on the other. This leads to a situation where children are particularly vulnerable to child labour and sexual exploitation. In Cartagena, a hot-spot for tourist, an estimated 1,500 children work in the sex industry.

Our intervention

Aid for internally displaced persons – In the Bolivar department, Tdh supports by the armed conflict displaced communities so as to guarantee the most basic rights of the children who remain the worst affected by armed conflicts: the right to health, education and protection. By training community workers and giving advice to local authorities, Tdh improves the situation of children and their families by offering access to health and education, by preventing domestic violence and by helping communities to defend their rights that were previously denied.

Protection against the risks of sexual exploitation of minors – In Cartagena, since 2005, Tdh is fighting sexual exploitation of children by promoting denunciation of the offenders, by offering legal assistance to the victims and by defending children in legal proceedings. By making a plea to local and national authorities, Tdh is reducing significantly impunity for these crimes.

• -75.519447 10.406983

  Cartagena

• -74.05426 8.816139

  Bolívar