Colombia reports over 25,000 climate‑displaced persons in early 2026

The Colombian Ombudsman's Office warned that more than 25,000 people were displaced by climate‑related events between 1 January and 30 April 2026. The hardest‑hit departments were Córdoba, Nariño, Cauca and Norte de Santander.

The displacement stems from a range of climate impacts – droughts, floods, sudden river rises, landslides, storms, wildfires, coastal erosion and biodiversity loss – which the office says now constitute a human‑rights crisis. The 2024 Constitutional Court ruling (Sentencia T‑123) recognised environmental factors as grounds for internal forced displacement and called for specialised state protection.

In response, the Ombudsman's Office is leading a multisectoral process to draft a mobility‑rights bill for disaster‑affected populations. Data from the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management show that in 2025 there were more than 4,700 climate events across 869 municipalities, affecting around 285 000 families, destroying 3 475 homes and evacuating at least 20 000 people. The 2025 records also note impacts on roughly 32 000 Indigenous persons, 16 000 children and adolescents, and 7 000 refugees and migrants, underscoring the disproportionate vulnerability of ethnic, rural, coastal and island communities.