The war in Colombia that has been waged for some 40 years began as an ideological war but is now a drug war. It has very little to do with ideology any more. FARC and the former paramilitary are largely drug gangs. People growing up in rural Colombia need to make a living somehow. In the absence of legitimate economic opportunity, they're going to choose what they can make a living from. The last time I checked, the drug gangs didn't have a labour code or an environment code guiding their activities.
The UN Secretary-General's representative, Walter Kalin, acknowledged in November 2008 that there was a high rate of forced displacement in certain parts of the country. But he also said that important developments had taken place since 2006, and noted the constructive role of the constitutional court. He went further and said that the reasons for forced displacement are multiple and complex: lack of respect for international humanitarian law by various armed groups, including guerrilla groups such as FARC and the ELN; the multiplication of armed actors and criminal activities in the wake of recent paramilitary demobilization--in other words, re-mobilizing as drug dealers or gangsters; and threats and pressures to collaborate with the illegal armed groups, narco-trafficking activities, and aerial spraying of crops, to name a few.
He's talking about aerial spraying of crops and forced displacement around drug production, but he's not talking about forced displacement around mining. Canada, by the way, is very good at mining, and our companies are recognized as practising better corporate social responsibility than most companies engaged in extraction activities abroad. But in the absence of legitimate economic trade around such sectors as the extraction sector, people will choose the drug trade as the only way they have to make a living.
Do you not agree that a substantial part, if not the majority, of the displacement occurring in Colombia is a result of the drug trade?