Every year, thousands of Colombians are forced to leave their homes due to the state of perpetual violence that has torn the country apart for more than forty years. According to a recent field report from Refugees International, more than 130,000 people are displaced each year as a direct result of this internal conflict. Some of these people cross the borders to Ecuador and Panama to seek refuge, others, for various reasons, cannot or do not want to leave their countries. These internally displaced people (or IDPs, as I will call them for the sake of brevity) are among the most vulnerable populations in the world. Since the start of this violence, more than 3 million people have found themselves refugees in their own country (A refugee in his own country – the fate of internally displaced Colombians nd). These people are forced to live in deplorable conditions, have suffered the loss of friends and family, live with the pain of their experiences that memory does not allow them to forget and live in a state of fear for the survival of this violence both directly and indirectly. Caught in the crossfire, innocent men, women and children also suffer. . . well, not exactly the same. Although all IDPs suffer, their experiences are not identical. An individual's experience is shaped by their age, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic class, and more. This article will focus on how internal displacement is a gendered experience. Specifically, it will focus on the experiences of internally displaced women (or IDWs), exploring the contradictory and multi-layered identity of an IDW. It will explore the physical, symbolic and structural violence that people with disabilities are subjected to, how individual power is taken away from them, and how they strive to achieve a level... middle of paper. ....ught in the Crossfire." World Politics Review. February 8, 2011. http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/7810/colombias-idp-crisis-caught-in-the-crossfire (accessed April 25 , 2013).Perez, Flor and Mariana Ortega Brena2008 Forced displacement among rural women in Colombia. Segura Escobar, Nora2000 Colombia: a new century, an old war and more internal displacement. culture and society. 14 (1): 107-127. .Warms and Nanda, Serena Nanda and Richard Warms2012 Culture Matters: A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology California: Wadsworth..