A letter to Colombia’s President signed by five Colombian NGOs has condemned the land restitution law for containing bureaucratic hurdles which has effectively prevented thousands of displaced families from regaining their livelihoods.
A recent addition to the land restitution law requires claimants to acquire the written authorization of the current owners of the property – who may well be those who usurped the land – for a topographical survey of the disputed land. The survey is a necessary piece of evidence in the reclamation process.
“The country is losing its farmers,” said Luis Sanabria in an interview with Colombia Reports. “The people who displace the farmers are the ones who benefit from this law.”
MORE: ‘Colombia’s land restitution not yet working’
The Latin American Working Group and Lutheran World Relief visited Colombia in June 2012 to observe if the Victim and Land Restitution Law was starting to bring relief to displaced people in the Caribbean area, but found that little had changed since their visit the previous year.
“Despite the shining promises of the Victims’ Law, we found … that land restitution has not begun on the Caribbean coast, except for cases in which brave and organized displaced communities decided to return on their own,” the organizations said in a report.
According to LAWG executive director Lisa Haugaard, people still live in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation in an area that for years has been ravaged by internal conflict, and controlled by paramilitaries and drug-traffickers, both economically and politically.
Jesus Alberto Franco, a priest and land rights advocate from the Colombian NGO, Inter-Church Commission for Justice and Peace (CIJP), has accused associates of former president Alvaro Uribe of blocking land restitution, particularly those who have pending investigations against them for links to paramilitaries. In February, Franco’s car was shot at in what his organization calls an act of intimidation.
“There are economic reasons [for blocking land restitution], to do with control of resources,” he told Colombia Reports. “And the other reason is the protection of those who are scared of evidence being found of what happened. When I say people of Uribe’s entourage, I mean those people being investigated for ties to paramilitaries.”
More: Paramilitaries, Uribe’s associates ‘blocking’ land restitution: NGO
- Interview with Luis Sanabria of Redepaz
- The letter to Santos