A debate among presidential candidates on forced displacement in Colombia was canceled by its organizers on Tuesday due to a “lack of interest” from the candidates, reports Colombian NGO CODHES.
The debate, which was to take place Wednesday morning at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Bogota, was planned by the Commission on Monitoring Public Policy on Forced Displacement in order to “create a platform for the candidates to share their proposals for dealing with this [humanitarian] crisis” in Colombia.
The commission is a CODHES-organized initiative that seeks to promote the creation of government policies to deal with the issue of forced displacement in Colombia.
The commission is composed of numerous Colombian NGOs who also work in the area of human rights and forced displacement, such as: Corporacion Viva la Ciudadania, Pastoral Social, Plan Internacional, Colombia’s National Indigenous Organization, la Fundacion Social, Planeta Paz, the Electoral Observation Mission, and Corporacion Nuevo Arco Iris.
Forced displacement is a crisis that has affected millions of Colombians over the last few decades. According to Colombia’s director of national planning, Esteban Piedrahita, “We have a huge amount of internally displaced people, there are 3.3 million, which is about 7% of the population.”