First posting...5 months in

Disclaimer: This blog does not, in any way, express the thoughts or opinions of the Fulbright Commission, HIAS, or any other organization I have worked with in Ecuador. My perspective and opinions are my own.

I'm starting this blog 5 months into my 10 months here in Ecuador because I have been really bad about e-mailing and updating everyone at home. I'm sorry! Hopefully this will be a new start. For those of you who don't know, I am living in Quito, Ecuador on a Fulbright scholarship from September 2008 to July 2009.

Through an affiliation with HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the U.S.'s oldest international migration and refugee aid agency), I am conducting a research project on the Colombian refugees that are living in Ecuador. More specifically, I am analyzing the impact of the "Mexico Plan of Action", which twenty Latin American countries came together to sign in 2004 in an attempt to address the refugee issue in Latin America, especially in and around Colombia. The Plan of Action highlighted three areas of focus for improvement: local integration and self-sufficiency for refugees living in cities, border protection and development, and resettlement of refugees to "third" countries in Latin America instead of Europe or North America. When it was signed in 2004, the head of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR or ACNUR in Spanish), António Guterres, called the Plan "the world’s most sophisticated instrument to protect and help those fleeing their homes and their countries." It has now been almost five years since its passage and I am trying to do it justice by seeing how well it has been implemented in Ecuador.

Most people I have talked to about my project are surprised about the fact that a) there is conflict in Colombia and b) there are Colombian refugees in Ecuador. Actually, there is very little public knowledge or press about the conflict, partly because the Colombian government itself tries to downplay the severity of the violence and its inability to end it. The conflict itself is decades old, extremely complicated, and very much tied up in U.S. policy. War first broke out in rural Colombia between 1948 and 1958 during a period called "La Violencia." The Liberal Party and Conservative Party fought a bloody battle for power which resulted in about 200,000 deaths. When the conflict finally ended, a few of the radical communist groups refused to demobilize and in 1966, they went on to form FARC and the ELN (two of the guerrilla groups that are still fighting today). With the support of the U.S. government and the C.I.A., the Colombian government began supporting counter-guerrilla military operations, which only served to escalate the violence. The decades of the 1970's and 1980's brought even more complications to the conflict as the illegal drug trade began to escalate in Colombia. Guerrilla groups began making a huge amount of money cultivating coca plants and were able to buy even more sophisticated weapons. The groups also began relying on kidnapping, extortion, and intimidation to fuel their campaign. The U.S. became increasingly involved in the conflict after President Nixon's announcement of the "war on drugs." Colombia became a target country for trying to control the flow of drugs into the U.S. The U.S. government furthered entrenched itself in the war when President Clinton announced the creation of "Plan Colombia." This new phase in U.S.-Colombian relations made Colombia the third highest recipient of aid from the U.S. "Plan Colombia" has not only provided the Colombian government with money ($3 billion as of 2004), but also with military aid including U.S. soldiers. The problem with this "Plan" is that the Colombian government has known ties to right-wing paramilitary groups (which, ironically enough, also make money off of the illegal sale of cocaine) and thus the funding that the U.S. is providing is actually fueling the violence, complicating the conflict, and doing virtually nothing to stop the cocaine trade. It is a completely misguided policy and many people here point to "Plan Colombia" as the reason why violence has escalated in the country in the past ten years. Between obscene amount of money fueling the fighting, the numerous guerrilla groups, the paramilitaries, and the government soldiers, thousands of Colombian have been killed or forced to flee their homes (there are over 3 million internally displaced people in Colombia and hundreds of thousands of refugees who have crossed the border into neighboring countries like Ecuador).

The fact that very people know about the conflict means that organizations working on behalf of displaced Colombians have a very hard time getting funding. This is one of the most tragic aspects of the whole situation.

Here in Ecuador there are over 250,000 Colombians in need of international protection. I came here expecting to study how well integrated all of these refugees are into Ecuadorian society. The problem is, out of those 250,000 "de-facto" refugees, only about 16,000-18,000 have actually been legalized and received refugee status, making the majority ineligible to work and receive international protection. Thus, 93% of the population in need is extremely vulnerable: they risk deportation or harassment by Ecuadorian police, they can't organize or unionize to guarantee a paying job, they are more easily susceptible to attacks and kidnappings from Colombian guerrillas in Ecuador (some Colombians are even targeted here in Quito...about 5 hours from the border), and they aren't even eligible to receive aid from humanitarian refugee organizations, including UNHCR, since their mandates only cover official refugees or those in the process of becoming refugees. Of course, my first question when I came here and learned about this situation was "why are so few Colombians registered with refugee status?" There are multiple reasons behind this. First of all, many Colombians are living in extremely isolated areas along the border and they have no idea of their right to apply for refugee status. Second of all, up until this point, there has been little to no government presence along the border which would allow refugees to register. Thirdly, some Colombians don't want to come forward and register themselves as refugees because they are still targeted by armed Colombian groups and they are afraid to identify themselves. Lastly, it is solely the Ecuadorian government's right to either deny or accept requests for refugee status. Status is largely based on an interview between the solicitant and a government official. A lot of the potential refugees are unaware of the language that needs to be stated in order to qualify. For instance, stating that they fled because of "threats from groups" would not qualify them under the official definition of a refugee. Instead, they must state that they fled because of "threats from armed groups." Little discrepancies like this has led to the Ecuadorian government only approving 32% of applicants for refugee status between 2000-2006.


Above is a photo of Colombians protesting for their right to refugee status here in Ecuador. Copyright belongs to Vistazo.com

This is obviously the greatest gap in the humanitarian response to Colombians here in Ecuador. Thankfully, UNHCR and the Ecuadorian government have been working together to start a new campaign aimed at fixing this problem. The program, called "Registro Ampliado", is a mass registration project that aims to register 50,000 Colombians along the border in 2009. A pilot version of the program was undertaken in December of 2008 in two areas along the border. While only about 200 Colombians were registered, 82% of the applicants were approved. This is a very positive statistic. "Registro Ampliado" is expected to be launched on a larger scale starting this month for the rest of the year. I have high hopes for it but, of course, there are a lot of potential problems. In order not to cause a mass migration from Colombia to Ecuador, "Registro Ampliado" moves from area to area for short periods of time and the organizers only announce the project a couple days in advance. Because of this, it is not yet known whether the majority of the Colombians living in isolated communities along the Ecuadorian border will ever hear about it. And if "Registro Ampliado" does succeed, there will be a massive new number of registered refugees that would then qualify for aid from humanitarian organizations. Funding, projects, and presence would have to increase exponentially.

It is a very exciting time to be doing this research in Ecuador. Up to this point, the "Mexico Plan of Action" has not really made a huge impact on the Colombian population outside of small-scale projects and a lot of discussion on the part of UNHCR and other organizations. But, like the "Registro Ampliado", UNHCR, civil society, and the Ecuadorian government have really been pushing forth projects and policies this past year that could make a hugely positive impact. My research here so far has combined interviews with UNHCR and numerous refugee aid organizations with surveys that I am conducting with the refugees themselves. So far I have conducted 76 surveys in Quito, Santo Domingo, Esmeraldas, Ibarra, and Tulcan (see the map below). It's a little to early to draw any definite conclusions and lot of the conclusions depend on how successful "Registro Ampliado" and other projects are implemented in the next few months before I leave.



I'm sorry for such a dense first post! My research is the basis for my experience here in Ecuador and I hope to share what I'm learning with as many people as possible. I promise to write more about my life here and my first 5 months next time! Love you all.