TITLE: Childhood Displaced

Childhood Displaced

Colombia faces the consequences of more than 50 years of internal armed conflict and violence due to the presence of illegal armed groups, drug trafficking, anti-personnel mines and disputes over territory control. As a result, many people have been displaced, forced to leave their lands, their homes and their lives.

Because of this, a high percentage of families have to look for other places to survive and make homes with their own two hands. Armed only with a basic knowledge of construction, they build homes out of whatever materials they can find in the environment around them. They build new lives in strange lands.

Thousands of children are victims of these unfortunate circumstances. They live in conditions of extreme poverty and are forced to adapt to adverse environments using means totally unknown to them. From an early age, they take on the lives and responsibilities of adults. The childhood play, the smiles, and the simplicity and sincerity of youth are invaded by violence, hostility and tears. The innocence, joy and purity of childhood are all lost.

The bodies of the children are marked by war and conflict. Their eyes convey how difficult their lives have been. The scars on their skin show the reality of day-to-day strife. Small human beings who, from an early age, accumulate the experience of shared pain, abandoned land, urban suffering, famine that becomes routine, repressed homesickness and memories that must be kept silent.

In Colombia, forced displacement directly affects the child population, causing alienation, isolation, trauma and loss of identity. Many Colombian children are orphans and live their entire lives as such.

AUTHOR: Eliana Arango (Colombia)

I'm a new photographer and student, I'm black and white lover because I believe it's a poetic way of seeing reality.