400,000 People Displaced in Chiapas in Two Decades Due to Conflicts - UN Elio Henriquez - La Jornada
go to original February 11, 2013

SAN CRISTÓBAL DE LAS CASAS, Chiapas - The head of the United Nations Program Office for Development (UNDP) in Chiapas, Oscar Torrens, declared that about 400,000 people in Chiapas have been displaced from their communities in the last two decades due to armed, religious, agricultural, environmental and political conflicts. These displacements represent almost one-tenth of the total population.

As a participant in the Forum of Legal Analysis for the Prevention and Treatment of Internal Displacement in Chiapas, organized by the United Nations Joint Program for a Culture of Peace and the Civic Alliance of Chiapas and held in Tuxtla Gutierrez, the official said that the problem "is complex" and its solution remains "a challenge" for authorities.

Many displaced persons face marginalization and poverty in the places where they settled, although it is considered unlikely that the majority of them might return to their original communities.

Torrens said it is necessary to create a council of care for displaced persons and to conduct a census to learn their conditions in order to promote public policies for care. He recalled that last year, progress was made with approval of the Law for the Prevention and Care of Internal Displacement in the state, but the regulations [bureaucratic rules governing implementation of the law] are needed in order to apply it in Chiapas.

Independently, the Coalition of State Displaced Persons of the state, made up of groups that promote and foster the rights of the internally displaced population, expressed their concern that after one year the Law has not been regulated.

See Spanish original

Posted by Jane Brundage at Mexico Voices

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