Colombia earthquake strikes at challenging time for aid response

Aid organisations responding to the powerful earthquake that hit Colombia on 10 August face significant challenges, including difficulties accessing some of the worst-hit areas in remote western regions that have been seeing rising violence.

Emergency response teams are still assessing the damage, but at least 181 people have already been reported killed and nearly 1,250 injured. It is feared the toll could rise significantly, with many more trapped under the rubble or missing.

Speaking at a press conference hours after the 7.4-magnitude quake struck at 7:34am on Monday, President Abelardo de la Espriella, who only took office last week, said more than 1,500 residential buildings, 18 health centres, and 52 schools had been damaged. An update on 11 August from the Colombian Association of Capital Cities (Asocapitales) said 153 buildings had collapsed.

The earthquake comes at a tough time for Colombia. The country was already facing its worst humanitarian crisis in years, with rising violence by armed groups making it increasingly difficult for aid groups to address mounting needs in conflict zones.

“Local communities were already facing armed conflict and high levels of poverty long before the ground began to shake,” Nicole Kast, the International Rescue Committee’s country director for Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, said in a press release issued on the day of the quake. “We are deeply concerned that today’s natural disaster will make the needs on the ground even steeper as people lose access to health care and other essential services.”

In Chocó department, where the earthquake’s epicentre is located, restrictions on humanitarian aid are common. The region is not only one of the poorest in the country but also one of the hardest hit by armed conflict, with more than 21,000 people experiencing forced confinement – the highest number in the country, according to Colombia’s Ombudsman’s Office.

Armed groups have sought to increase their control over communities as they fight each other for control over key territories, leaving remote communities even more isolated. The quake has now rendered some of them – including Chocó’s San Juan and Baudó river regions – completely unreachable.

“Chocó subregions such as San Juan and Baudó are currently inaccessible and isolated,” Shirley Hidalgo, senior director of operations of World Vision in Colombia, told The New Humanitarian. “The local authorities are asking for urgent medical supplies and support to address the needs of this department.”

But it may be hard for aid to arrive soon. And not only in Chocó. The situation in that department is mirrored in other places affected by rising violence.

According to the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, more than 1.6 million people in the country were affected by violence and armed conflict last year – three times the figure in 2024. Some 96,000 people were forcibly displaced and 155,000 were confined by curfews, armed strikes, and drone attacks, as armed groups waged war for territorial control over strategic trafficking routes and illicit economies.

Meanwhile, 416 “humanitarian access restrictions” were registered, including threats and violence that impeded humanitarian personnel and their services to civilians – a 13% increase on 2024.

“In the past two years, the context has been characterised by the expansion and strengthening of Non-State Armed Groups (NSAG) in different territories of the country, an increase in territorial disputes… and in high-impact armed actions,” Yann Cornic, director of the Danish Refugee Council office in Colombia, told The New Humanitarian in an email exchange last month. “These factors have created greater risks for the affected communities and have significantly complicated the conditions for providing humanitarian assistance and protection.”

Who do aid agencies engage with?

Colombia has been gripped by a decades-long cycle of internal conflict, despite repeated efforts to address it. A landmark peace accord signed in 2016 led to the demobilisation of the FARC guerrilla group and a temporary lull, but new and more numerous armed groups filled the void and fighting has surged over the last decade.

During his 2022-2026 presidential term, De la Espriella’s predecessor, Gustavo Petro, sought to move away from predominantly military responses and pursue dialogue with armed groups through his so-called “Total Peace” plan. But the policy yielded little progress and a dramatic rise in violence has since triggered a cascade of new humanitarian needs.

Instead, De la Espriella, who took office on 7 August, has pledged to take a hardline stance against armed groups. He joined US President Donald Trump’s “Shield of the Americas” security alliance, and the US has pledged $1 billion in security assistance to Colombia.

De la Espriella has also vowed to restart Plan Colombia – a US-backed anti-drug military programme launched in 2000 that displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians – and to launch a new military offensive against armed groups. The latter is part of his so-called “Patriot Plan 2.0” – billed as a revamped version of an iron-fisted crackdown on armed groups launched in 2003 by Álvaro Uribe – a populist right-wing president.

Aid organisations worry that all this could bring a new escalation of violence, driving greater humanitarian needs and additional risks for their operations.

“For us, the situation will become much more difficult because the context will be harsher, and the [armed] groups will tighten their control [on territories],” said Etienne Malingrey, director in Colombia of the International NGO Safety Organization (INSO), which opened a new office in the country last year.

Experts say the fragmentation of armed groups has not only led to more fighting but also to changes in their structure and leadership. This, in turn, has made it more difficult for aid groups to identify who to engage with at the local level to obtain access to communities in need.

In the past, humanitarian organisations had to negotiate access with one or two main armed actors, but coordination is harder now that there are more. The rising number of ongoing conflicts and military operations only compounds that problem as it means more turnover in command positions within armed groups.

“It’s becoming increasingly difficult to identify who’s in charge within [armed] groups. Changes [in leadership] are happening much more quickly, the people involved are very young, and the operational chains aren’t as clear,” explained Malingrey from INSO.

When they do engage with them, the risks are also higher, as this new generation of fighters often pays little heed to the underlying rules of humanitarian work. “These are people who are unfamiliar with international humanitarian law and human rights,” said Ángela Olaya, director of Conflict Response, a Bogotá-based organisation studying the armed conflict.

In this context, aid groups are often forced to call on community leaders to obtain access. But it is an approach that puts locals “at considerable risk”, and isn’t necessarily efficient, Malingrey said. “The response is somewhat slow, and the reliability of the information we receive from leaders in certain contexts is also limited.”

As conflict deepens, mistrust grows

The past year has been particularly difficult.

As conflict has intensified, rival armed groups have sought to tighten their control over entire communities. In the Norte de Santander department, for instance, the National Liberation Army (ELN), one of the country´s main armed actors, started fighting a FARC dissident group in January 2025, displacing more than 138,000 people and confining over 12,000 over that year.

Constant ambushes, confrontations, and military operations have made armed groups increasingly suspicious of humanitarian actors.

“The command structures and internal cohesion within these groups are much more fragile and dynamic, the sense of mistrust toward everyone – including humanitarian actors – is pervasive,” Olaya explained.

As a result, many humanitarian access restrictions are related to interference with the movement of humanitarian personnel or agencies, with 51 cases reported between January and July 2026 – 20 more than in the same period of 2025.

“In Cauca, Norte de Santander, Bolívar, and Guaviare, the main issues or restrictions arise because a particular armed group is suspicious, imposes last-minute rules, or because… conflict actors [suddenly] become active, and it is no longer safe to provide assistance to the population,” said Cornic.

In March 2026, the Estado Mayor Central (EMC), a FARC dissident group present in at least 133 municipalities across the country, announced it was forbidding the UN Verification Mission, the Organisation of American States Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia (MAPP), and the Colombian Ombudsman’s office from carrying out activities in areas under their control. The group cited “violations of trust and neutrality”, claiming humanitarian assistance and verification missions had been used to gather intelligence to facilitate military operations against them.

The announcement was not the first of its kind.

In June 2025, a faction of the same group, the “Bloque Amazonas”, published a pamphlet “reminding” UN bodies and the MAPP that their access to areas under their control was restricted. A similar message was sent in Cauca in May 2025.

Barriers are sometimes more concrete. In Norte de Santander, humanitarian convoys have been forced to turn back several times when deploying in the field, with armed groups going as far as checking humanitarian staff´s personal phones. In southern Bolívar and the mountainous area of Nariño, some humanitarian teams have been asked to provide identification papers, letters of acceptance by community members, or access permits signed by armed groups.

The growing risks on the ground

Violence against healthcare workers has also been on the rise.

In February, a doctor and a nurse were kidnapped in Norte de Santander and forced to provide medical care to injured members of the ELN after a bombing by Colombia’s armed forces in the small town of Tibú.

A similar situation was reported in the violence-ridden southwestern department of Valle del Cauca in April. And in Briceño, in northwestern Antioquia department, an ambulance was stopped by members of an armed group who forced the medical personnel out of the vehicle and killed the patient.

According to data shared by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), there were 595 incidents of violence against medical missions in 2025 – 16 more than in 2024. Recorded incidents this year include threats against healthcare personnel, restrictions on access to services, demands for care under inadequate conditions, and obstruction of efforts to treat the wounded.

The theft of humanitarian vehicles is also becoming more common. At least six were reported stolen in 2025, and 10 so far in 2026, according to OCHA’s data. Armed groups use them for logistics but also because it allows them to move around under cover for criminal purposes.

“Between the reporting of the theft and the moment the truck is recovered [by the police]… there’s enough time for them to do what they need to do with it,” Olaya said.

Another source of concern is the greater use of drones carrying explosives. Although aid workers are not directly targeted, Malingrey said that there were five or six incidents last year in which humanitarian teams were on the ground when drones exploded only 300 to 500 metres away.

On 18 June, in Tibú, a drone attack during confrontations between armed groups forced a humanitarian organisation to suspend its activities and seek shelter. According to the Colombian Ministry of Defense, 333 attacks involving weaponised drones were registered in 2025, a 445% increase from 2024. OCHA recorded 158 drone attacks between January and July 2026, especially in Cauca, Norte de Santander, and Antioquia.

Aid groups are still looking for ways to cope with these new dynamics. In some areas, humanitarian workers have had to take alternative – often much longer – routes to avoid conflict zones or armed groups’ checkpoints. They also avoid going to the field with personal phones.

Stijn Houben, head of operations at the ICRC’s regional delegation in Bogotá, said they are trying to adjust their strategies based on the experience of other countries.

“We’re making a huge change internally… where we learn best practices from other contexts that may be much more advanced in these issues – such as Ukraine – and try to adapt and implement them here for our teams,” he said.

Uncertainty about the impacts of the new government’s announced military offensive is already affecting humanitarian work. A staff member of one organisation who asked to speak anonymously because they weren’t at liberty to speak about this topic, said “armed groups don’t know what’s coming and are already increasing restrictions”.

“There’s more mistrust with humanitarian organisations too, so we’ve tightened our security and focused on building trust with communities,” they added. How all these complex dynamics will impact the response to the earthquake remains to be seen.

This article is republished from The New Humanitarian under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.