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Society

Colombia has a population of 47.8 million, of whom 7.9 million live in Bogota, the capital. The country has the second largest population of internally displaced persons on the continent, with an estimated 3.3 million to 4.9 million people having been uprooted by armed conflict. Most people (76%) live in urban areas.

Whilst Spanish is the official language, Colombia’s many ethnicities—European, American or Creole extraction (80%), Afro-Colombian extraction (11%), indigenous (3%)—mean the country is linguistically diverse: there are 65 indigenous languages and two creole languages.

The literacy rate is 94%.

Christianity is the main religion and some 90% of the country’s population is Catholic. The remainder are evangelicals (3%), or other small religions (2%), with no information available about the remaining 5%.

Colombia is a republic with a presidential system. The President is Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2014, 2014-2018), who recently concluded a peace process and agreement with the FARC guerrilla organization.

Per capita GNP is USD 7,780. Colombia is currently the third largest economy in South America. Some 30.6% of the population live below the poverty line.

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