UNHCR campaign offers new perspective on rights of Colombia's displaced

Kara Weinacht
9/11/2009
11:17 am

After blogging about the overall refugee situation of the world, and coming across the names of some of the UN's agencies designed for and focused on refugee situations, I decided to look further into the UNHCR. This led me to an article I felt relevant to my last entry, begging for a solution to the wider problem of refugee displacement.
The article explains a project targeted at increasing awareness about and empathy towards people who have lost everything. Basically, actors are hired to walk around popular squares in Bogota, Columbia with signs saying "I lost my laptop in the airport" to get attention. Once an audience is found, they explain that the loss of a laptop is nothing compared to everything that refugees have lost, extracting a vague sense of relevance to wealthier Columbians.
The refugee situation in Columbia is one of internal displacement. Without formal documentation for the ownership of their land, the displaced peoples are easily robbed of their land (the land is not only their property, but also their source of income). Stripped of their possessions, the displaced peoples of the Columbian countryside find no consolation from city Columbians who write them off as impoverished, rather than once-landowners who lost everything.
The project to raise awareness, is effective in doing that, but it's nowhere near the kinds of solutions that I had hoped for. I had to read the article a few times through, because the first time I read it, I thought it was a joke. My initial reaction was "this is how the UN is handling refugees?!" For one, this project doesn't directly help the refugees. Secondly, raising awareness of the situation isn't going to bring back the estimated sum of 6 million hectares (an area larger than Switzerland) that the Columbian farmers have collectively lost. I understand that there are unorganized bureaucratic politics at hand, but I honestly thought that the UN would have more power, or at least better solutions in situations like this. I can't help but shake my head if the best we can do is raise awareness. (I'm not saying that we don't need to raise awareness, I just think that there are more important things that should be prioritized higher on the list...like putting together a committee that can help organize the land ownership documentation.) Sadly, there is no easy answer and no easy solution. But really, walking around with a poster doesn't do too much good unless there are about 20,000 other people with posters too.

http://www.unhcr.org/4aa51d206.html