In the northeastern Catatumbo region of Colombia tens of thousands of civilians are being forcefully displaced due to violent conflict that broke out on January 16, 2025, as the ELN guerrilla attacked dissidents of the FARC guerrilla. Paramilitary groups are also involved.
ELN is the largest remaining active guerrilla in Colombia. The Colombian government resumed appeasement talks with the group under current President Gustavo Petro’s administration in 2022. However, these talks have been frozen since May 2024.
On January 17, 2025, the day after violence broke out in Catatumbo, Petro announced that the peace talks with ELN would be suspended due to their use of violence in the region. Petro was elected on many promises, one of the most important being his promise to achieve “total peace” with all the remaining armed groups in the country.
Now, not only does a peace agreement seem unattainable, but the conflict in the region has persisted for over a month with no signs of de-escalation in sight. The UN states that over 80,000 Colombians are currently suffering the consequences of this sudden increase of violence in the armed conflict. Also, 46,900 children are unable to attend school and an estimated 40,000 civilians from the region have been displaced because of the ongoing violence.
Displacement is a prevalent and long-lasting issue in Colombia. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the country “has the world’s second-highest population of internally displaced people after Syria.” The Colombian government reports 8,578,124 victims of forced displacement as of December 31, 2023. And, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) estimated that 5,077,150 people remain displaced as of that same date.
Colombia has been at war on and off since the beginning of its history as a nation. Colombia’s armed conflict is arguably the longest war in world history, affecting each and every Colombian citizen’s life in one manner or another. The reality for many, especially those living in rural areas, has been forced displacement.
Luciana Gómez is a second-year Colombian IE University student:
“I believe that, from a historical point of view, this [displacement] is something that has never stopped. We’re talking about a situation that has always happened, and that is like a rollercoaster that has its ups and its downs.”
Though, what is currently happening in Catatumbo marks the largest forced displacement in Colombia in the last 28 years. According to El País, only 10 cases in the past 28 years have surpassed over 5,000 displaced persons. Catatumbo’s figures are almost 30,000 people more than the second-largest recorded massive displacement; El Charco in 2007 with 11,672 displaced persons.
Violence and conflict have never ceased to exist in Colombia, but the past decade did not include such dramatic demonstrations of violence against civilians. The BBC stated that what is currently happening is “in humanitarian terms, images with repertoires of violence that haven’t occurred in Colombia in the last decade.” This begs two questions: Why is the ELN lashing out greatly now? And, why is the impact considerably greater than all their other previous actions within the last decade?
It’s believed that the area is highly sought after by ELN and disidents of FARC mainly because of access to more than 30,000 acres of coca leaf. Catatumbo has recently become the largest cocaine production enclave in Colombia.
Additionally, the government’s presence in the region is scarce, making it easier for political groups to cease control or instigate violence without being reprimanded. Essentially, it is about expansion of political control and monopoly over drug trafficking.
There’s another complicating factor: Venezuela. According to the BBC, ELN has acquired a “binational” nature, as it has spent recent years establishing itself and growing within Venezuela. Catatumbo shares a border with Venezuela, and to achieve stability, Colombia and Venezuela need to have a good diplomatic relationship. At the moment, that is not the case.
“Everything that is happening with Catatumbo – I mean, we’re talking about an area that shares a border with Venezuela which is contributing to it [Catatumbo] being much more unstable,” Gómez said.
This can be traced back to the fact that ELN is harboring people across the border in Venezuela, making it unknown to the Colombian government exactly what they can expect to be up against. There are no accurate head counts for any guerrilla groups, FARC dissidents included, making assessing what efforts are needed to be able to put an end to the ongoing violence difficult.
However, the influence of the strained relationship between Colombia and Venezuela is no excuse for the government’s abandonment and lack of presence in the region. It is frustrating to see that decades into the armed conflict the Colombian government remains unable to tame such grave national security threats.
It is particularly frustrating given the fact that President Gustavo Petro vowed to be the one to attain “total peace” in the country. And yet, ELN has been unrelenting with its violent siege of Catatumbo for over a month, with no clear end to the situation.
“I feel that the current government does play a role. I feel that the president is inept. But, beyond whether or not this is a matter of the left or the right – I think that’s something which doesn’t matter in this type of conflict – what matters here is the inefficiency of the government in terms of their management of security.”
Luciana Gómez
There cannot be peace in Colombia without a new approach to the country’s insecurity problem. The government cannot continue to abandon its people in times of crisis and extreme violence. “The role of the government has to change. The discourse about the government had to change. And, we have to educate ourselves as a country,” Gómez said.
The sudden surge of violence in the Colombian armed conflict is a humanitarian crisis that requires urgent action which the government is failing to provide. The current violence being perpetrated against citizens in Catatumbo is frighteningly parallel to the worst kinds of violence which Colombians have already experienced in the armed conflict. The Colombian government bears the responsibility of ensuring security for its citizens and must find a means to do so in order for violence to cease.
But, I also find that for Colombia to heal, it is the responsibility of those of us privileged enough to do so to tell the stories of those who cannot speak for themselves. Learning humbly about the experiences of the people whom we share a country with is our collective responsibility as fellow citizens, especially given our government chooses to ignore them until it is often too late.
Featured image provided by ACNUR/Cortesía Lucas Molet.
