Embera

“Internal displacement” applied to refugees means folks like the Embera in Columbia or (sometimes) the Kurds in Iraq, forced to flee their homes but not their countries.

Matthew Yglesias » Climate Migration 2010

The region was previously inhabited by the Cunas, an indigenous group which was forced to migrate to Panama because of inter-tribal fighting with the Katío-Embera group which is now established throughout Colombia's Chocó region.

Los Katíos National Park, Colombia 2008

Also last year, more than 2,000 Indigenous Embera people in Colombia have abandoned 25 villages and their territory, in order to escape violence from paramilitaries.

Avatar is Real: Indigenous Peoples are Being Displaced by Wars and Corporations 2010

An indigenous group of Embera people, proper to the upper Sinú, have their ancestral territories in there, and are being badly affected by the intervention of outsiders.

Sinú Valley dry forests 2008

Next there is the Kuna-Yala indigenous reserve (3,200 km2) and the Embera Wounan reserve (4,326 km2).

Chocó-Darién moist forests 2007

Embera leaders say the community feels frustrated, abandoned and hopeless.

Refugees in their own country: Columbia’s indigenous people caught in the middle of civil war Stephen Retherford 2008

Alfonso Manucama, an Embera indigenous leader and elected governor of the village of Conondo in Chocó, remembers the day when four army helicopters suddenly landed in the middle of their indigenous reserve three years ago.

Refugees in their own country: Columbia’s indigenous people caught in the middle of civil war Stephen Retherford 2008

Alfonso Manucama, an Embera indigenous leader and elected governor of the village of Conondo in Chocó, remembers the day when four army helicopters suddenly landed in the middle of their indigenous reserve three years ago.

Archive 2008-06-01 Stephen Retherford 2008

Normally, the indigenous Embera people live in a reserve thousands of miles away amid the virgin rainforests of Chocó in northwestern Colombia.

Refugees in their own country: Columbia’s indigenous people caught in the middle of civil war Stephen Retherford 2008

Embera huts made from straw and palm trees and crops were damaged, says Manucama.

Refugees in their own country: Columbia’s indigenous people caught in the middle of civil war Stephen Retherford 2008