Abstract
Family policy in Colombia has primarily targeted families living under vulnerable conditions. Such policy initiatives are part of the government strategies to fight two social issues that affect a large percentage of the population: poverty and forced displacement. In this chapter, we analyze the social and historical context that framed the current conceptualization of family and family laws and policies in Colombia. Next, we describe two existing programs for families living in poverty and forced displacement and discuss the current challenges for family policy development, implementation, and evaluation that emerged from an analysis of these policies. The chapter concludes with a discussion on specific recommendations to overcome existing challenges and foster the development of explicit family policies in Colombia.
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Notes
- 1.
The term Plan Colombia is most often used to refer to US legislation aimed at curbing drug smuggling and combating left-wing insurgency by supporting different military and nonmilitary programs in Colombia. Among the nonmilitary programs, there are those focused on alternative development and internally displaced persons.
- 2.
The National Planning Department (DNP) is an administrative department that belongs to the Executive Branch of the government and is directly answerable to the office of the President of the Republic.
- 3.
The Human Development Program (Programa de Desarrollo Humano) is a Colombian government’s initiative designed to achieve the goals established at the United Nations’ Millennium Summit in 2000 with regard to eliminating poverty around the globe. The Human Development Program proposes that families’ well-being be measured based on an index that takes into account different criteria such as family’s access to utilities, household head’s and children’s educational level, and family’s living conditions (e.g., quality of the home they live in).
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Carrillo, S., Ripoll-Núñez, K. (2014). Family Policies in Colombia: A Focus on Policies for Vulnerable Families. In: Robila, M. (eds) Handbook of Family Policies Across the Globe. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6771-7_27
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