On June 4, Pope Francis received a delegation from Casa-Hogar Deutschland e.V., a German charity that assists educational projects for women and girls in Colombia’s strife-torn Chocó Department (map).

In a letter read to the Pope during the audience, the area’s bishops said that “the people of Chocó are experiencing a dramatic humanitarian and human rights crisis … manifested in forced displacement, deaths and mutilations by anti-personnel mines, child recruitment, threats to leaders and communities, murders, extortion and other crimes.”

“Beloved Pope Francis, Chocó is in need of decent living conditions and loudly cries out for your apostolic intervention to achieve two fundamental objectives: a humanitarian agreement and a negotiated solution to the armed conflict,” the bishops added.

Recent reports from the Spanish news agency EFE, The Guardian, and the European Commission’s ECHO agency describe the dire situation there.