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31 December 2008
Up to 40,000 people were displaced in the Mexican state of Chiapas during an uprising by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in 1994, and its subsequent confrontations with government forces. OHCHR cited a range between 3,000 and as many as 60,000 IDPs in 2003, and around 5,500 were reportedly still displaced in 2007.
In 1995, the army launched a counter-attack which caused further displacement of supporters of the Zapatista movement, and paved the way for the return of displaced supporters of the government. This aggravated social divisions within the indigenous communities which have yet to be resolved. A 1996 agreement recognising indigenous rights and culture, and in particular the right to land, has never been implemented, and tensions have continued between, on one side, the Zapatista movement and supporting indigenous communities, and on the other, the government and other affiliated communities. In 2006, state authorities reportedly started to evict people from land they occupied from large-scale landowners in 1994.
Meanwhile most IDPs have resettled across rural Chiapas, though small IDP sites remain. It has been reported that they continue to receive support from the Zapatista movement, which has established “autonomous” municipalities in areas under their control with health and education facilities which also provide services to the IDPs. The most pressing concerns of IDPs are based on their general poverty due to limited access to land and insecurity of tenure over that land. The solution to their displacement thus lies in the original concern of the Zapatista movement: secure ownership of land to make agricultural communities sustainable.
The Government created a multi-sectoral commission to respond to the IDP situation, but no significant impact has been reported and there were no IDP-specific laws in 2008. There is no international response to the situation in the absence of an obvious humanitarian crisis, and so it has been left to human rights NGOs to advocate for the IDPs.