This project studies migration decisions of very poor households in an environment of high level of violence. A simple model shows that migration of liquidity constrained households is likely to respond differently to receiving welfare benefits depending on violence levels. By matching detailed restropective data on violence levels in Colombian municipalities with a household survey collected for the evaluation of the "Familias en Acción" welfare programme, the empirical analysis takes into account possible selection problems of the sample and the key issue of endogeneity of violence. The main results show that high levels of violence encourage households to leave their municipality of residence but that welfare programmes such as the conditional cash transfer programme under study may mitigate these flows, provided that the incidence of violence is not unduly high. Other important determinants of migration are the type of property rights and the social insurance rural households can benefit from.