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23-06-2026
BOGOTA: “My brother was murdered for not paying an extortion payment…in front of his children,” Edilma Martinez Flores said at a support centre for displaced people in Bogota.
She fled her home on the outskirts of Cali, in the south-west, after armed criminal groups handed out leaflets ordering residents to leave or face violence.
“We had no choice but to leave our things behind. They started placing bombs along the routes people travel.”
Edilma is far from alone and experiences like hers are why insecurity is dominating voters’ minds in Sunday’s key presidential election.
Colombia’s six decades of conflict between armed groups, the state and cartels has killed hundreds of thousands of people.
It isn’t new, but illegal armed groups have roughly doubled their membership in the last five years.
These include Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) dissident factions, the National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Clan del Golfo, who have expanded their control of rural areas key to drug trafficking and illegal mining.
A brutal offensive between the ELN and FARC dissidents near the Venezuela-Colombia border last year displaced tens of thousands of people.
The two presidential candidates have starkly different visions for tackling this violence, in a campaign marked by the assassination of a presidential candidate, homicides, kidnappings and bombings.
Left-wing senator Ivan Cepeda is seen as the “architect” of the current president Gustavo Petro’s “total peace” strategy, prioritizing negotiation with armed groups. Critics say it has failed and let armed groups exploit ceasefires to expand their control. Supporters argue it prevents a larger loss of life.
He also played a key role in the 2016 peace deal which disarmed thousands of FARC fighters. He has pledged “social transformations that the country urgently cries out for” while promising to “take stock” of the peace strategy and “make the necessary changes”.
His challenger is a conservative outsider, right-wing businessman and lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella, who calls himself El Tigre (The Tiger in English). He’s been endorsed by Donald Trump and is a US citizen. The signature outfit for him and his supporters is the Colombian football shirt, which the left has accused him of politicizing. He has promised 10 mega-prisons, a tough military crackdown and an end to negotiations with armed groups, saying he has the “balls” to take them on.
“Any criminal who does not surrender will be taken down,” he has promised.
Isabelita Mercado Pineda, a government advisor for peace, victims and reconciliation in Bogota, says forced displacement rose 300% between 2024 and 2025.
“We have not seen displacements like this for the last two decades,” she added.
She said it has been driven by factors including rising cocaine production, the army failing to occupy territories left by the FARC after it demobilized in 2016, leaving voids for armed groups to fill, and a “failure” of the government’s strategy that she argued provides criminal groups with “carrot but not enough stick”.
The support centre for victims in Bogota shows the scale of this issue. Erin Gamboa from the Choco region on the Pacific Coast said his half-brother was taken by FARC guerillas and they have not heard from him since.
“My region is heavily contested, criminal gangs fight over the territory,” he said, outlining how paramilitaries, guerillas and the FARC fight over illegal mining and cocaine trafficking sites.
Through tears, the woman described how crime has grown “so much” and you “can’t go out in peace anymore”. (Int’l News Desk)
