U.N.: COLOMBIA IS HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE

UNITED NATIONS -- The drug-fueled war in Colombia has created the
worst humanitarian crisis in the Western hemisphere, with more than 2
million people displaced and Indian tribes threatened with extinction,
the U.N. humanitarian chief said Monday.

In the last four years, the number of people forced to flee their
homes has increased by about 1 million, Undersecretary-General for
Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland said. Colombia now has the
third-largest number of displaced people in the world - behind Congo
and Sudan, he said.

"Colombia is therefore by far the biggest humanitarian catastrophe of
the Western hemisphere," Egeland told a news conference. It also has
the most killing in the Western Hemisphere, and the longest war -
waged for 39 years, he said.

Colombia's war pits two leftist guerrilla groups against government
forces and right-wing paramilitaries. At least 3,500 people, mainly
civilians, die in the fighting every year. Egeland, a former U.N.
special adviser in Colombia, recently spent four days visiting
displaced people living in shantytowns outside Cartagena on the
Atlantic coast and near Bogota.

In the last year, the number of kidnappings and assassinations have
gone down, but the "humanitarian situation is worsening" because poor
Colombians are being attacked by armed groups and are forced to flee
their homes, he said.

"This leads to people going from the countryside to towns and cities
where they stay in shantytowns" without access to education, health
care or adequate shelter, he said.

In the shantytown outside Cartagena, he said, "I just felt it was
10,000 people floating around in a sea of sewage and garbage."

The humanitarian crisis and the war feed into a vicious cycle, Egeland
said.

The young among the millions displaced have "no hope, no education, no
feeling of having a future" and become recruits for
guerrillasparamilitary forces and drug gangs, he said.

In 10 "besieged and blocked areas of the country," the fighting has
trapped several hundred thousand Indian tribes and peasant
communities, preventing them from receiving international assistance,
he said.

Several Indian tribes "are in acute danger of becoming extinct"
because of persecution, forced recruitment by armed groups, and being
forced from their land by "the coca mafia," Egeland said.

Next month, the United Nations, the Colombian government and
non-governmental organizations are launching a new "humanitarian plan
of action" focusing on projects to help the internally displaced,
Egeland said. The United Nations will then appeal for international
funding.