Colombia’s minister for housing, the environment and territorial development, Carlos Costa Posada, said Thursday that some 450,000 displaced families remain homeless, and only 12% of those forcibly removed from their land have been provided with accommodation by the state.
According to Costa, figures on the number of homeless displaced Colombians are improving, after the Constitutional Court slammed Accion Social, Colombia’s aid agency for the displaced, for not doing enough to help the millions uprooted by the country’s violent conflict.
Of the 780,000 displaced households, amounting to 3.4 million people, 97,000 families have received housing Costa said.
“Not all are homeless, because it is estimated that 450,000 households are without a house and even that is an important advance,” Costa said.
Gustavo Valdivieso, the head of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Colombia, said that while the Andean nation continues to come in second only to Sudan in terms of its displaced population, public policy attending to their needs has improved.
Costa’s comments follow the armed occupation of the Bogota headquarters of Accion Social by displaced protesters who were demanding promised aid and subsidies.