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Over the last decade, Colombia has made significant progress in its struggle against poverty. Yet, despite achieving an overall decline in the poverty rate, the gap between conditions in urban and rural areas continues to widen. The main problems the country faces are concentrated in rural areas, where 25 per cent of the country’s population of 45 million live. Poverty, social injustice and violence continue to hinder the process of sustainable rural development.
 
For more than 40 years, Colombia has been ravaged by conflict and violence involving outlawed armed groups and drug cartels. In late 2010, just as the security situation began to show signs of improvement, the country suffered a series of natural disasters, including extensive floods, which devastated agricultural production and threatened to undermine recent economic and social improvements.

Rural poverty, especially extreme poverty, is on the increase. According to statistics gathered in 2009, poverty affects nearly 46 per cent of the population, and is considerably more prevalent in rural areas. About 64 per cent of rural women and men are classified as poor, and 29 per cent of them live in severe poverty. There are also large discrepancies in standards of living between the regions. Sixty per cent of the population in the departments of Boyacá, Cauca, Chocó, Córdoba, Huila, Nariño, Sucre and Tolima are poor. Poverty is particularly severe in remote rural areas and conflict zones. Limited access to schooling exacerbates poverty, and illiteracy is high among rural communities.

Unequal distribution of wealth is a major issue in rural Colombia, where large landholders control vast areas of underutilized land. The loss or lack of land is one of the main causes of poverty in the country. The armed conflict has destroyed the land and livelihoods of a large number of rural people, and many of them have been forcibly displaced from their plots. Over the past 15 years, some 2 million hectares of land belonging to small farmers, indigenous and Afro-Latino descendant communities have been illegally occupied.

Altogether more than 1.3 million rural families are now landless. Half of them are employed as labourers by owners of medium and large-sized farms. The rest have developed various survival strategies, and many are employed in services, commerce and other non-agricultural activities.

The importance of agriculture as a source of income has dwindled over the last 50 years. Poor rural people are no longer typically small-scale farmers who struggle to increase their crop productivity. Instead, they are more often than not members of households involved in microenterprises. Whether they farm or pursue other activities, rural women and men are held back by limited access to productive assets – land, irrigation and financial services – and to social services, education, technical assistance and skills training. Lack of infrastructure prevents them from engaging with competitive markets.

Women, young people and members of households headed by women, who have limited access to assets and resources, are those most vulnerable to poverty. However, Afro-Latinos and indigenous peoples, located mainly in remote rural areas, are among the country’s poorest people.

Source: IFAD