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Civilian Casualties in the Colombian conflict: A New Approach to Human Security. Jorge Restrepo, Michael Spagat Washington, DC August, 2004. Intro. Colombian conflict – left-wing guerrillas (FARC, ELN), right-wing illegal paramilitaries (AUC) and government forces
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Civilian Casualties in the Colombian conflict: A New Approach to Human Security Jorge Restrepo, Michael Spagat Washington, DC August, 2004
Intro • Colombian conflict – left-wing guerrillas (FARC, ELN), right-wing illegal paramilitaries (AUC) and government forces • We have a great dataset on the conflict – more than 21,000 events, actors, types of events, georeferencing, casualties, etc. • We focus on civilian casualties, analyzed by actor and event type
Main Findings The main human security threats are (in order): • Paramilitary massacres in isolated rural areas (killings) • Guerrilla massacres in isolated rural areas (killings) • Guerrilla bombings in isolated rural areas and the five biggest cities (injuries)
Conclusion • We can pinpoint the forms of civilian casualties in attacks with known authors with remarkable specificity. • More than 1/3 of them are accounted for by paramilitary and guerrilla massacres and guerrilla bombings in isolated rural areas. • Add in guerrilla bombings in the five biggest cities and we have almost 40% of the casualties.
Conclusion • In other words rural security is the big problem but there is a serious urban terrorism issue as well. • Colombia is notably lacking in strong local security institutions, to a large extend due to the country’s sad history of abusive paramilitarism
Conclusion • There are significant pockets of local wealth, in particular, big landowners and cattle farmers that must be tapped to support local security. • We will need more good micro data on conflict to fulfil a larger research programme.