Colombia’s armed conflict has cost the government $115 billion over the last decade, said a report given by the Colombian Liberal Party on Thursday.
A collaborative report was presented by the Liberal Party’s President Simon Gaviria in Pereira, a city in western Colombia where his aunt was assassinated during an attempted kidnapping in 2006.
Gaviria said that defense costs in the last 10 years have been approximately $79 billion, and money going towards attending victims of the conflict came to nearly $30 billion.
The Liberal Party president said that the attacks on infrastructure had cost an additional $6 billion, “so the figure is raised to $115 billion in the last 10 years, this is the cost of the armed conflict to Colombia.”
“What we are doing here is asking that we don’t forget these things, their existence gives us the capacity to learn from the past and move forward. We have this now but we want more truth from the past,” said Gaviria.
However, according to the Liberal Party report the conflict will cost another $125 billion over the following 10 years. “With that money Colombia could be a different country,” said Gaviria.