Reductions of up to 60% in funding for communities displaced by violence in Colombia were revealed by the country’s Constitutional Court on Wednesday.
Judicial authorities have been making continuous assessments of the humanitarian funding situation and announced that by 2010 there will have been budget cuts of up to 60% in various programs dedicated to helping displaced people throughout the country.
“In 2009 the buget for rural and urban income generation was 100 billion pesos however, by 2010 this figure will have dropped to 40 billion pesos,” stated newspaper El Tiempo.
Furthermore this indicates a 60% reduction in resources for one of the most important public policy plans for a long-lasting solution to displacement in Colombia.
The Director for Social Action, Diego Molano, claimed that next year the government intends to increase the budget for refugee welfare from 1.3 to 1.4 trillion pesos.
Molano added that for humanitarian protection and assitance, handled by the organization Social Action, funding will increase from 34 to 37 billion pesos in 2010.
Colombia has one of the world’s highest number of internal refugees with an estimated 3 to 4 million forced from their homelands due to violence and insecurity. The exact figure however, is unknown.
