International
Severe or moderate food insecurity is low but affects 26% of households in Colombia
Serious or moderate food insecurity in Colombia decreased in 2023 compared to 2022, but continues to affect more than a quarter of the country’s households, while serious food insecurity has hardly changed and continues to affect 4.8% of households, according to data published this Friday by the Colombian Government and the FAO.
The director of the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), Piedad Urdinola, revealed at a press conference that severe or moderate food insecurity “fell from 28.1% to 26.1%” in 2023, affecting more than 14 million people, while regretting that in severe food insecurity the “variations are very slight,” since it has barely gone from 4.9% of households to 4.8%.
Where severe or moderate food insecurity decreased the most was in the municipal capitals of Colombia (from 26.8% to 24.7%), while in dispersed populated and rural centers the decrease was more moderate (from 32.5% to 31.2%).
In addition, the results show that in the departments with the worst records of hunger or poverty, La Guajira and Chocó, food insecurity has had great decreases, even reaching a reduction of 24.3 percentage points in the Chocó jungle, where severe or moderate food insecurity went from affecting 43.2% of households to 18.9%.
“The report does not present a very encouraging picture for the goal of eradicating hunger by 2030,” admitted the representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Colombia, Agustín Zimmermann, although he admitted that there is “political will” and means to reverse the situation.
“Colombia undoubtedly has all the natural resources, the productive capacity, the institutionality, and the human resources to advance this goal,” said the Argentine who emphasized that “the vision of a Colombia without hunger and without malnutrition is within reach.”
The data come from the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) developed by the FAO, published this Friday for the second year in Colombia, which is the largest in Latin America, carried out in more than 86,000 Colombian households.
The data on this scale show results similar to those presented by the World Food Program (WFP) in February that revealed that food insecurity was reduced in 2023 from 30% to 25%, with 13 million people still in moderate or severe food insecurity.
The data, which were included in the National Quality of Life Survey (ECV) of the DANE, show that food insecurity is greater where life situations are most vulnerable, such as when it comes to single-parent households, made up of migrants, where there is no work or with many family members or young children.
Thus, in 2023, severe or severe food insecurity affected 40.7% of households led by a black, Afro, raizal or palenquera person, and 46.3% of indigenous people.
The situation in households led by a Venezuelan migrant is also particularly delicate, since “in households of international migrants in Venezuela, that prevalence goes to 41.6% so we see a very important gap that is replicated in regions,” according to Urdinola, and that contrasts with the 25.4% prevalence in households without migrants.
On the other hand, in households with more than five members, severe or moderate food insecurity reached 37.9% in 2023, while in single parents, food insecurity stood at 31.4%.
Food insecurity affected 32.8% of households with at least one child under 5 years of age, although “we are seeing an improvement from one year to the next,” said the director of DANE, pointing out that in 2022 it was 36.5%.
International
Petro compares US deportations with trains sent to Nazi concentration camps
The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, compared on Wednesday the deportation of illegal immigrants from the United States with the sending of tens of thousands of people to concentration camps in Europe during World War II by Nazi Germany.
“From the episode with Trump (…) there are a series of lessons that must be learned, from them and from us. From them, I suppose, they don’t have to get handcuffs from people who want to get out of their own country,” the president said.
And he added that “There will be a political discussion there, for example, if they are not repeating the same mistake of the Germans in 1943 because they used trains and railways to carry entire wagons full of Jews, socialists and communists to the concentration camp.”
The crisis began after Petro disallowed, through a message on the social network X and not through diplomatic channels, the entry into the country of two planes sent by the United States with deported Colombians, claiming that, by coming handcuffed, they were not receiving “dignified treatment.”
In response to that refusal, Trump ordered the imposition of 25% tariffs on all Colombian products, in addition to other travel and immigration sanctions, and Petro responded with a similar measure, which caused panic throughout the country since the US is Colombia’s main trading partner and strategic ally in political and security matters.
For that reason, between yesterday and today, three flights of the Colombian Aerospace Force (FAC) have already arrived in Bogotá, bringing 306 Colombians, of which, according to Petro this Wednesday, 42 are minors.
“Where here is Mr. Trump going to tell 42 Colombian children that they are criminals?” the president wondered.
He added: “In the same way he told 42 children, he will tell hundreds of thousands, who are criminals, that’s what they thought in 1943.”
The president also said that in the United States “everyone who is Latin American, indigenous, black, will be treated as a criminal.”
“It’s called collectivizing crime, it was invented by (Adolf) Hitler,” he concluded.
Petro also assured on Wednesday that his country will have difficulties in its foreign relations due to global changes that, he said, lead to the emergence of “monsters”.
“In the case of Colombia’s foreign relations, we see neither more nor less that what there will be are difficulties. It is a world that enters a phase of profound changes,” said the president when taking office to his new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Laura Sarabia.
Pointing out that the world is in a phase of change, Petro quoted the Italian philosopher and politician Antonio Gramsci to say that while the new does not fully appear or the old is extinguished, “the monsters appear.”
“And monsters is what we are going to have, hopefully not within Colombian society but I’m afraid so are you too,” he said.
Petro assured that those who fight “for a better world” must “put on their boots” and form “an army of life, a united humanity, a united Latin America, a group that knows how to defend democracy and freedom.”
At that point he referred to Sarabia, his right hand, and who at 30 years of age is the youngest chancellor that Colombia has ever had, to indicate that she has to carry the voice of the country in that fight.
International
The White House rescums its order to freeze federal aid and loans
The White House rescinded on Wednesday the order promulgated on the eve of immediately freezing all federal subsidies and loans, a measure that had already been temporarily blocked by a judge.
“The Office of Administration and Budget (WBO) memorandum M-25-13 is terminated,” this office said in a new memorandum addressed to “heads of departments and executive agencies.”
The order to freeze aid and loans had created some chaos and confusion in its implementation, even causing the fall of the federal payment portals of the public health insurance program Medicaid.
The Government had justified the measure by arguing the need to ensure that all funds comply with the recent executive orders signed by Trump, which include restrictions on the rights of transgender people and cuts in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
Trump’s pause put at risk the disbursement of billions of dollars for various programs, including student loans, and could have a negative impact on health research, food assistance and funding of support organizations for veterans and people with disabilities.
The measure could also affect aid for areas devastated by fires in California and floods in North Carolina, regions that Trump visited last week and where he had promised federal support.
Hours after publishing the order, a federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked its implementation for a week.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt had said on Wednesday morning that the Trump administration was “prepared to fight this battle in court.”
For his part, the leader of the Democratic minority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, warned that Trump “will try to find another way” to do it, but he welcomed the decision to terminate the order: “The Americans defended themselves and Donald Trump backed down,” he said.
International
Trump signs a law against migrants with minor crimes, the first since his return to power
US President Donald Trump signed his first law on Wednesday since he returned to power, a measure that allows immigration authorities to arrest migrants for robbery and other minor crimes before they have been convicted.
Trump initialed the law, the first since the beginning of his second term on January 20, in the East Room of the White House, before a hundred guests, including relatives of Laken Riley, a young woman murdered by an undocumented migrant whose death inspired the legislation.
“The United States will never forget Laken Riley,” said Trump, who said that the migrant who murdered her, from Venezuela, should have been deported.
“Instead of being expelled, as should have happened, he was released in the United States, like millions of other people, many of them very dangerous, but you see what we are doing: we are getting them out of here,” he stressed.
During his speech, Trump told the story of Laken Riley, whose name the law bears. Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student who was murdered in the state of Georgia in February 2024 by an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant, José Ibarra.
Ibarra resided irregularly in the United States and had been arrested for a minor crime of shoplifting, but was allowed to stay in the country while his immigration case was in process. The migrant found guilty of Riley’s murder at the end of 2024 and is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
His death fueled the debate on immigration in the final stretch of the November 2024 elections, in which the Democratic candidate and then vice president, Kamala Harris, lost to Trump, who had promised the largest deportations in the history of the country.
The initiative, approved on January 22 by the House of Representatives, by a Republican majority, with the almost unanimous support of that bench – except for one legislator who did not vote – and the support of 46 Democratic congressmen.
The law also received the approval of the Senate, where the Republicans have a majority, with the support of 12 Democratic senators, despite the opposition of activists for the rights of immigrants, traditionally aligned with the Democratic Party.
These groups denounced the measure for considering it too radical, to the point that it could trigger massive raids against people accused of minor crimes, such as shoplifting.
Civil rights and immigrant organizations also warned that the law eliminates due process for those accused of non-violent crimes.
The arrests contemplated in the new legislation include petty thefts in supermarkets or stores and detainees will be placed in the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The text will also authorize the attorneys general of the states of the country to intervene in the immigration policy decisions of the federal government. Among the new powers, they will be allowed to force the State Department to no longer grant visas to citizens of countries that do not accept deportations from the United States.
According to US media estimates, the government would need to spend more than 3 billion dollars and increase the capacity to detain migrants to more than 60,000 beds in order to enforce that law.
Trump put migration at the focus of his campaign and has pressured government agencies to impose a minimum daily arrests quota per agent and raise the total number of arrests to between 1,200 and 1,500 per day.
The US president suggested that the approval of this law is just the beginning. At a conference of Republican legislators at his hotel in Doral, near Florida, he highlighted on Monday that he shows the potential of bills that will help them take vigorous measures “against criminal foreigners and fully restore the rule of law in the country.”
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