Death in Rio: security forces patrol the Jacarezinho favela the day after 25 people were killed in a drugs operation on May 6 2021.
EPA-EFE/Andre Coelho
Attempts to wage war on drugs in developing countries which don’t take into account the needs of local people are doomed to fail. Here’s why.
Venezuelans wait at the Colombian border to be processed and housed in tents in 2020. All Venezuelans now in Colombia will receive a 10-year residency permit.
Schneyder Mendoza/AFP via Getty Images
Though not a rich country, Colombia is unusually well equipped to handle mass migration because of its own history with political strife and displacement.
The funeral of Nicholas Suarez, who was murdered with four other students in Buga, Valle del Cauca, Colombia, January 2021.
EPA-EFE/ Ernesto Guzman Jr
After a withered 2020 due to COVID-19, the flower industry is hoping to blossom. The industry, which remains far from sustainable, remains a multi-billion dollar operation.
Hope and religion can be important coping resources for people during strict lockdowns - but also a source of struggle.
In this July 2020 photo, a woman is comforted in her home during a wake for her son who was killed along with at least 26 others in an attack by drug cartels on a drug rehabilitation centre where he was being treated in Irapuato, Mexico.
(AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)
The American public should understand that the United States has played a critical role in creating and fuelling violence in Latin America via its unsuccessful war on drugs.
Farmers extract raw opium from poppies in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province.
Ghulamullah Habibi/EPA
Step aside, Pablo Escobar. New research shows it was poor farmers who helped turn Colombia into the world’s largest drug producer when they started growing and exporting pot in the 1970s.
Residents of the Dona Marta favela, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, work to clean up community areas.
EPA-EFE/Antonio Lacerda
Coronavirus is serving Latin American organised crime well.
Venezuelans try to enter Colombia at the closed Simon Bolivar international bridge borders crossing, March 16, 2020. Normally, 40,000 Venezuelans come into Colombia every day.
Schneyder Mendoza/AFP via Getty Images)
A program intended to reduce coca production ended up giving two Latin American countries a big boost to their flower power.
A member of the military in Manilla, Philippines with wrapped sachets of “holy host” as the country goes into quarantine during the COVID-19 crisis.
Maria TAN / AFP
A nationally mandated quarantine isn’t keeping Colombia’s armed groups at home. Despite calls for a ceasefire, they are still killing activists, threatening humanitarian workers and seizing aid.
More than 2,000 women were processed through demobilization camps in Colombia as the government transitions disarmed FARC guerrillas back into civilian life, Jan. 18, 2017.
Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images
Small business grants are supposed to help Colombia’s disarmed FARC fighters start new lives as entrepreneurs. But interviews with 12 female ex-insurgents suggests the government plan may fail women.
An indigenous leader from Brazil protests against the destruction of their lands and people.
EPA-EFE/FACUNDO ARRIZABALAGA
While celebrating the millions on streets in London and Vancouver, we must not forget the sacrifices of people in the Global South.
Venezuelans hoping to cross into Ecuador via Colombia amass at the Rumichaca border bridge in Tulcan, Ecuador, as new visa restrictions limiting migration took effect, Aug. 26, 2019.
Reuters/Daniel Tapia
Citing national security, Ecuador, Peru and Chile have all made it harder for Venezuelan migrants to enter the country, and xenophobia is rising across the region – even in more welcoming Colombia.
FARC commander Iván Márquez issued a return to armed struggle in a video posted Aug. 29, 2019.
Reuters TV (screengrab)
Dissidents in Colombia’s FARC guerrillas are threatening to renew armed struggle three years after signing a landmark peace deal. Here, experts explain the history of Colombia’s fragile peace process.
Red Cross forensic specialist Stephen Fonseca, right, searches for bodies in a field of ruined maize in Magaru, Mozambique, after Cyclone Idai, April 4, 2019.
AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi
Meet the unsung aid workers who put their lives on the line during war and natural disaster to make sure the dead are treated with respect – and that their grieving families get closure.
Women dance during a protest march against the killing of activists, in Bogota, Colombia, on July 26, 2019. Colombians took to the streets to call for an end to a wave of killings in the wake of the nation’s peace deal.
(AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)
In Colombia, a 2016 peace agreement does not contain the ongoing violence. Violence escalates as criminal armed groups replace the FARC rebels in a violent battle for land and resources.
Visiting Scholar, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University; Director of Studies at the Changing Character of War Centre, and Senior Research Fellow, Dept. of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford