Colombian Refugees in Ecuador: The collateral damage of a drug war and an insurgency
Ecuador in particular has suffered from the collateral impact of Plan Colombia. In large part due to its geographical position on the border of Colombia’s most volatile provinces and its comparatively liberal refugee policy, Ecuador is now the site of the largest refugee population in Latin America. As of January 2009, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that Ecuador is home to 130,000 to 140,000 Colombians in need of international protection–only a fraction of whom are officially registered as refugees or asylum seekers –even as Colombian civilians continue to spill across the border at a rate of five to ten people per day. While Ecuador has implemented reforms to streamline the registration process and improve living conditions for refugees, government resources remain vastly unsufficient to confront the problem and has not received nearly enough international support.
The International Law of Refugees
The burgeoning refugee crisis in Ecuador underscores the flaws of an international system which has repeatedly failed to protect the world’s stateless people. The Geneva Convention of 1951, which established the UNHCR, and a the subsequent protocol of 1967, defined a refugee as one who flees his native country and is unable to return due to a “well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, member of a particular social group or political opinion.” However, this definition has proven inadequate the needs of recent decades, when many refugee crises have been spurred by civil wars which cause civilians to flee internal violence, although they are not the victims of individual or group-based persecution. Many Western nations, including the United States, continue to apply the 1951 definition which discounts many of today’s refugees, and have consequently abandoned their past roles as providers of asylum. Today’s refugees, like those fleeing violence in Colombia, most often find themselves internally displaced or living in an equally impoverished neighboring country where they are forced to rely on the UNHCR, rather than on a national government, for the protection of their rights.
Latin American leaders, recognizing that the official definition of a refugee is incongruous with the contemporary nature of civil conflict in their countries, first expanded the definition at a 1984 summit in Cartagena, Colombia. The Cartagena Declaration recommends that Latin American governments “include among refugees persons who have fled their country because their lives, safety or freedom have been threatened by generalized violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violations of human rights, or other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order.”
Most recently, Latin American leaders gathered at a 2004 Mexico summit and emphasized the need to train officials involved in the refugee registration process to ensure that the human rights of these displaced people are protected. The Mexico Declaration cited the Colombian refugee crisis as one of the most serious in Latin America, expressing concern over the large number of undocumented Colombian refugees in Ecuador, Venezuela, and Panamá. Diplomats proposed various solutions, including expanding the presence of state institutions in border areas and adopting a “Regional Strategic Plan” to ensure that the basic needs of refugees are met. However, the Mexico Declaration stressed that none of this could be accomplished without the financial assistance of the international community.
While many Latin American countries have yet to enact the reforms promoted by the Cartagena and Mexico Declarations, Ecuador has consistently affirmed its commitment to protecting the human rights of refugees. As early as 1992, a presidential decree implemented the Cartagena definition and created an Eligibility Commission charged with determining the status of asylum seekers. Ecuador’s new constitution (effective since October 2008) recognizes the “rights of asylum and refuge in accordance with the international humanitarian law” and calls for “the common protection of Latin American and Caribbean people in transit and destination countries.” The constitution is also explicit in its prohibition of refoulement and deportation, which is significant because deportation had previously been a real possibility for undocumented refugees at the mercy of the police. Foreign Minister Fander Falconí summarized Ecuador’s policy when he stated, “For Ecuador there are no illegal people: we believe in the principle of innocence, and above all we are a country of peace.”
A Crisis Overlooked
The Colombia-Ecuador refugee crisis of today has its roots in a prototypical example of a post-1945 civil conflict that international law has long been ill-equipped to handle. The current violence in Colombia can be traced back to the 1960s with the founding of the Marxist rebel groups FARC and ELN, which operated in rural regions in efforts to destabilize the central government. In the 1980s, these groups began to finance themselves through the drug trade, while anti-communist paramilitary squads competed for control of the drug routes. The armed groups, particularly the vigilantes, began to forcibly displace civilian farmers as a tactic to gain control of these illicit trade routes. They also became involved in the frequent assassination and kidnapping of civilians. Since 1990, nearly 4 million Colombians have been forced to leave their homes due to the violence.
The displacement crisis worsened, however, with the inception of Plan Colombia in 1999. A shored up Colombia military has since pushed the violence out of the cities and escalated the conflict in rural border provinces such as Putumayo and Nariño, where civilians find themselves trapped between battling guerilla groups. Moreover, with U.S. funding, President Uribe tolerated an aggressive aerial fumigation program in coca-producing regions, which has destroyed the livelihoods of both legitimate farmers as well as desperate coca growers for whom there was no other profitable option. In an effort to maintain control over their territory, armed groups then increased the level of threats and coercion against elements of the civilian populations. These factors have led to a dramatic expansion of the displaced population as civilians sought to escape the internal upheavals; in the first six months of 2008 alone, 270,000 people fled their homes, a record level since 1990.
While the majority of displaced Colombians seek to resettle elsewhere in the country, joining a population of over 3 million internally displaced persons, many others seek refuge across the border. Ecuador has experienced the greatest influx of refugees; while in 2000 there were 500 applications for asylum in Ecuador, by 2004 there were almost 30,000.
The vast majority of exiled Colombians are undocumented and unrecognized by the Ecuadorian government, constituting a population of “invisible” refugees which experts have estimated to be as high as 150,000 to 250,000. These refugees face significant obstacles to gaining legal recognition, one of which is the fear of violent retaliation by the armed groups from which they had fled. Eighty percent of Colombian refugees in Ecuador say they fear persecution by Colombian armed groups, a concern bolstered by the spillover of drug violence into Ecuador’s border provinces. Increasingly, Colombian guerillas and paramilitary groups carry out “death threats, selective assassinations, kidnapping, and extortion” against refugees. Others do not seek legal recognition for fear of deportation by the Ecuadorian government. Indeed, despite Quito’s liberal policies, many asylum seekers are rejected in the official application process or expelled by the police. Yet other refugees are simply uninformed about the asylum process and unaware of the rights guaranteed to them by the Ecuadorian constitution.
The plight of Ecuador’s “invisible” Colombian refugees is cause for serious humanitarian concern. Without recognized legal status these persons exist at the margins of society, often without access to healthcare, schooling for their children, clean water, electricity and other basic necessities. The majority of undocumented refugees, who cannot afford the $1,000 labor visa required for legal employment, have no independent means of improving their situation. Many of them, especially in the northeastern provinces of the country, experience discrimination in their host communities, which see them as an unwanted strain on already scarce resources. This prejudice is grounded in truth, because the invisible refugees do not live in internationally protected camps, as do refugees in other parts of the world. The Colombian refugees are forced to live in impoverished marginal Ecuadorian communities, where they are forced to compete with the local population for resources. The refugees experience lower standards of living than even their Ecuadorian neighbors. Fifty percent of Colombian refugees and asylum seekers in Ecuador live in extreme poverty, on less than one dollar a day, and 75 percent live on less than two dollars a day. One economist calculated that forcibly displaced Colombians will experience on average a 37 percent decrease in aggregate consumption over their lifetimes.
“Para Ecuador, no hay personas ilegales”
Over the years, various researchers have criticized the response of the Ecuadorian government to the influx of Colombian refugees. One researcher alleged that the administration “used the Cartagena Agreement definition selectively” by granting asylum only to those who could document that they had been victims of “large-scale massacres” or individual acts of persecution. The Center for International Policy asserted that the government needs to implement a “much stronger anti-discrimination campaign” than the one currently organized by the Catholic Church. The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants further faulted Ecuador for demanding that refugees prove that they lacked a criminal record, information that is very difficult for rural refugees to obtain.
Overall, however, the scope of the Ecuadorian response to the problem has been remarkable, especially given that Ecuador is actually a poorer country than Colombia, with 60 percent of its own population living below the poverty line. Quito has confirmed the promises made in the country’s new constitution by taking substantial action toward the protection of Colombian refugees. In April 2007, President Rafael Correa announced Plan Ecuador, a comprehensive program for improving the security, the economy and the quality of life in the border provinces. The plan initially faltered, eclipsed by the drafting of the new constitution, but in August 2008 Correa promised a three year, $200 million initiative to offer expanded economic options to residents, including refugees, of the five northern border states.
More significant is Ecuador’s Enhanced Registration Process, developed in conjunction with the UNHCR. The program was created to address the widespread lack of access to the asylum application process and the enormous backlog of refugee applications, estimated at 33,000 unfilled forms in 2008. The Enhanced Registration Process seeks to expedite the application system by providing for roving “on-site eligibility commissions” which move throughout the border communities and offer a one-day registration process for eligible refugees to obtain one-year renewable visas. The pilot phase of the program began in December 2008 in Muisne, a village of the northwestern province of Esmereldas, where the government hopes to issue 50,000 visas by November. The second stage was inaugurated on July 20 in the province of Sucumbíos, where the government expects to register 23,000 people.
Overall, the Enhanced Registration Process has been successful–the human rights group Refugees International reported in July that the program was registering approximately 1,000 people per week and Foreign Affairs Minister Fander Falconí affirmed that 10,603 visas had been issued during the program’s first phase. The effects of the program on the living conditions and local integration of the refugees, however, remain to be seen.
Correa’s government has received significant support from the UNHCR, which established an office in Quito in 2000. In July 2008, the Correa administration and the UNHCR launched a National Consultation Process involving a comprehensive series of initiatives, including the Enhanced Registration Process, targeted toward ameliorating the refugee crisis. The consultation process inaugurated a public awareness campaign in the border region to educate the local population about the situation of the refugees, as well as programs to “support” and “strengthen” the authorities working with refugee populations. In addition, to date UNHCR has provided the majority of the funding for the Enhanced Registration Project, after Ecuador’s economy was severely damaged by the current financial crisis.
Continued Setbacks
Unfortunately, however, many obstacles still exist to the long-term success of the Correa administration’s initiatives. The Jesuit Refugee Service noted that the “lack of dissemination of reliable information about Enhanced Registration” and the “prohibitively high cost of family-based visas” preclude refugees from obtaining asylum status. Moreover, the Enhanced Registration Process is severely understaffed, and the staff members working to register these stateless people face exhausting hours, dangerous working conditions, and a rapidly rising number of applications. Similarly, a delegation from the Center for International Policy noted that despite the establishment of various refugee programs, Ecuador still lacks adequate “resources and infrastructure” to implement them.
Displaced people whose communities have not yet been reached by the Enhanced Registration Process face an even more difficult situation. Ecuador’s General Directorate for Refugees (GDR) is fully operational in only two cities, Quito and Cuenca, and these locations are inaccessible for many refugees. Upon initial registration with the GDR, refugees often wait up to ten months to receive an official asylum card, which itself is only valid for one year. And not all are equal beneficiaries of Ecuador’s asylum application process. Exiled Colombian coca farmers most of whom had no other viable means to earn a living, are consistently denied asylum, in accordance with Ecuador’s insistence that official refugees have a clean criminal record. The government also rejects applicants who it deems had an “initial flight alternative.” Indeed, despite its improved infrastructure and cooperation with the UNHCR, Ecuador granted refugee status to only 4,400 of the 11,100 people whose applications it reviewed–and this out of 17,600 people who had initially applied for refugee status.
Meanwhile, undocumented Colombian expatriates continue to cluster in precarious conditions. As recently as April, a lynch mob murdered two Colombians, while in May, a Colombian armed group attacked Colombian refugees in the border town of San Martín. The spillover of violence from Colombia is on the rise. In 2007, Ecuador claimed to have destroyed 47 secret Colombian bases in its territory, while in 2008 it insisted that it demolished 100. Such violence further fuels the impression among Ecuadorians that Colombian refugees are tied to armed groups and generates further intolerance against Colombians seeking official documentation. Colombian refugees still pose a strain on Ecuador’s battered economy, as they create a strain on local schools and healthcare systems and continue to undersell Ecuadorian traders and farmers.
Obstacles to Progress
Many of these setbacks may be unavoidable for lack of adequate funding to confront the refugee problem. In 2006, the total budget for the UNHCR–responsible for protecting over 20 million “persons of concern” around the world–was $1.1 billion, a meager sum for such a tremendous operation. Of this, the UNHCR pledged only $23 million in funding for Ecuador for the period from 2008 to 2011, an amount that the Ecuadorian Minister of Security Miguel Carvajal insists will be depleted before this time is up. Carvajal said that his own government spends $39 to $50 million per year “on services for Colombian refugees,” a figure which is nonetheless dwarfed by the $100 million per year that the government spends on border security. Meanwhile, the United States, which provides approximately $600 million per year in aid for the Colombian military, contributed only $22.6 million from October 2007 to September 2008 to Colombian refugees through the State Department Bureau for Population, Refugees, and Migration.
The refugee crisis is further exacerbated by the complex network of diplomatic relations among Ecuador, Colombia, and the United States. President Correa has consistently opposed President Uribe’s “democratic security” agenda and U.S. military aid to Colombia, which–despite certain favorable results–Correa rightly sees as the impetus for the influx of refugees into his country. Colombia-Ecuador relations reached a nadir in March 2008 when Correa broke off diplomatic relations after the Colombian military crossed the Ecuadorian border to bomb a FARC camp located on Ecuadorian terrain. Relations declined even further when a laptop seized during the raid allegedly revealed that Correa had “received campaign donations from the FARC in 2006.” While relations were restored at the level of Chargé d’Affaires in June 2008, the nations still have not exchanged ambassadors. The decline in Ecuador’s relations with Colombia, Washington’s closest ally in Latin America, has inevitably chilled U.S.-Ecuador relations, evidenced most recently in Correa’s refusal to renew the U.S. lease on the Manta air base. The U.S. subsequently arranged an agreement with the Uribe administration for the use of seven U.S. military bases on existing Colombian facilities.
The effects of this diplomatic standoff on Colombian refugees are clear. Ecuador and Colombia cannot come to any agreement on managing the crisis, let alone arrive at a joint proposal to stem the spillover of drug violence across the border. Uribe, who refuses to even recognize that an internal conflict exists in Colombia, has prioritized military expansion over aiding the three million internally displaced persons in his country. He appears to have even less regard for his countrymen who have been forced to flee Colombia, and has not substantially addressed the problem with the Ecuadorian government. The U.S., likely displeased with Correa’s condemnation of Plan Colombia and his de facto alliance with Latin American leftists Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia, has provided little initiative for resolving the crisis.
Moving Forward
Most analysts who have assessed the situation in northern Ecuador agree that the first step toward alleviating the crisis must be the appropriation of greater aid figures by the international community and, in particular, from the United States. One group recommended that the U.S. double its level of assistance to the border regions in Fiscal Year 2010, while another emphasized that the U.S. should “finance UNHCR’s registration, documentation, and refugee integration efforts in the border countries.” It is indefensible for the United States to abandon a problem in which it was instrumental in helping to create. Now that the U.S. has aided the Uribe administration in weakening the FARC and diminishing the violence in Colombia’s urban centers, it is necessary to provide for those who have lost their livelihoods and homes due to the proliferation of violence in the rural areas. Moreover, the current flow of refugees to neighboring countries tends to destabilize the security situation in the border region, and if the U.S. is truly committed to eliminating drug trafficking and illegal armed actors in the Andean region, it must take the plight of the refugees more seriously. Increasing the presence of security and aid workers on the border will not only safeguard the rights of the displaced, but will simultaneously impede the spread of paramilitaries and narcotics-related crime across the border. Finally, abandonment of the refugees in Ecuador eventually will lead to further U.S. estrangement from Correa and his leftist allies, who are attaining increasing political relevance in Latin America.
There have been calls for increased international support for the Enhanced Registration Process, and for Plan Ecuador’s efforts to provide “basic services” and “infrastructure expansion” in the border regions. Alfonso Morales, director of the refugee department in the Ecuadorian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that “the international community hasn’t yet recognized the magnitude of the problem. We need more foreign support.”
The immediate response of the international community must be directed toward emergency humanitarian relief, job training, and the expansion of asylum application services. Refugees face a severe shortage in access to basic services and need to quickly develop skills that will enable them to integrate into the local economy. Programs focused on enhancing the long-term prosperity of refugees–for example, a recent UNHCR microcredit program that provided loans to documented refugees–are insufficient for those requiring immediate assistance and are least relevant for the poorest and most desperate refugees.
Ultimately, though, only transnational initiatives to counteract the causes of the refugee crisis and long-term economic development programs in Ecuador’s northern provinces can stabilize the situation of the hundreds of thousands of Colombian refugees. Such programs, needless to say, will be the most difficult to implement, underscoring the unfortunate gap between humanitarian idealism and political reality that characterizes so many contemporary refugee crises. To the detriment of those in need of international aid, the global community is too often embroiled in adversarial confrontation to admit its greater responsibilities.