By Nelson Bocanegra
MONTERIA, Colombia (Reuters) – President Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist chief, promised his authorities would purchase 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres) of land for victims of the nation’s six-decade battle, to fulfill the phrases of a 2016 peace take care of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
It has not proved simple.
1000’s of farmers gathered within the northern metropolis of Monteria final month for the handover of some 20,800 acres as soon as seized by paramilitaries – the highest perpetrator of each pressured disappearances and killings throughout the peak of the battle and a significant participant in pressured displacements.
“Today a hope of many years will become real: having a piece of land to work,” stated Dalel Bitar, the top of a farmers’ affiliation in Buenavista, about 50 miles from Monteria.
Bitar stated his members of the family, displaced in 2003, had lately misplaced hope of receiving compensation. “It’s been justice after so many injustices.”
However others are nonetheless ready.
After Petro was elected in 2022, his land redistribution aim was rapidly halved. The federal government has come up towards the enduring presence of crime gangs and insurgent teams, finances constraints, torpid forms and the unwillingness of some landowners to promote, officers, farmers and lecturers say.
Land redistribution – a longstanding demand of many poor farmers who supported Petro’s election – has specific urgency amid Colombia’s ongoing battle.
Failure to enhance victims’ lives might perpetuate violence, conserving them poor and weak to new rights violations or pressured recruitment by armed teams, analysts, lecturers and authorities agree.
In the meantime, Petro is struggling to make concrete progress at stop-start negotiations with armed teams in Colombia, the place violence stays a harsh actuality in sure areas.
Colombia is amongst a number of international locations worldwide – together with South Africa, Brazil and Mexico – which might be struggling to dwell as much as mass redistribution guarantees.
Colombia’s battle was initially sparked within the Nineteen Sixties by land rights calls for, with Marxist rebels promising to redistribute land and wealth held largely by a small group of elite households.
A 2016 peace deal between the state and the FARC rebels offers Colombia till 2031 to handle land reform in two components: to formalize the possession of some 17.3 million acres, a few of it occupied by poor farmers who might have farmed there for generations however lack deeds; and to purchase 7.4 million acres for use as reparations for victims of the battle.
Within the two years since Petro took workplace, the federal government has bought about 1 million acres for some $600 million, a pointy rise from the 45,000 acres bought below earlier President Ivan Duque, stated Felipe Harman, the director of the Nationwide Land Company (ANT).
Officers are focusing first on shopping for and distributing unused land and land expropriated from criminals or handed over by former right-wing paramilitaries who demobilized in 2006, he stated.
Petro’s authorities has additionally formalized possession of three.2 million acres and will add as much as one other 1.2 million earlier than the tip of the 12 months, Harman stated.
A knotty forms makes finishing up reparations for Colombia’s victims tough.
The nation’s Victims Unit can’t instantly hand over land or different property which have been seized or obtained from armed actors, however should promote them and pay reparations with cash.
To boost funds and get land handed over by insurgent teams, criminals and former paramilitaries off its books, the Victims Unit is now promoting that land to the general public and to the ANT, which might then distribute it.
Victims of displacement could also be provided land as restitution, however also can ask to obtain a financial fee if they don’t need to return to their earlier house or want to maneuver to a different location. Different victims – like kidnapping survivors or descendants of homicide victims – normally obtain cash.
“We are in limbo, there is no solution, they go, they visit, they do one thing and tomorrow another and then never call us again,” stated Jose Martinez, who was displaced by paramilitaries in 2006 from the city of Ayapel alongside a whole bunch of others, and was on the Monteria occasion hoping to talk to authorities.
“We have fought for 18 years and the government, the National Land Agency, still haven’t solved the problem,” stated Martinez who returned house after guarantees from ANT officers that he would obtain land as reparation.
ONGOING CONFLICT
The federal government has about $1.1 billion to compensate about 600,000 folks earlier than the tip of Petro’s time period in 2026, double the determine of victims who obtained reparations below Duque, stated Lilia Solano, head of the Victims Unit.
How a lot every sufferer receives is dependent upon their particular person case. A couple of fifth of Colombia’s inhabitants, 9.75 million folks, are registered as battle victims. Eighty p.c suffered displacement, generally mixed with different violations like homicide of a beloved one or rape.
“We would hope the figure wouldn’t keep growing but that depends on us not having an armed conflict,” stated Solano. “The conflict is a well-oiled machine for producing victims.”
It might price $80.6 billion to pay reparations to all of the battle’s victims, she stated, including many find yourself in excessive poverty, making them simple targets for pressured recruitment.
Mireille Girard, the United Nations refugee company’s Colombia consultant, instructed Reuters some 580,000 folks had been newly displaced in 2022 and 2023 and extra worldwide assist is required for reparation and peace efforts.
Colombia’s 4 important unlawful armed teams grew throughout 2023 as they consolidated territorial management financed by drug trafficking and illicit gold extraction, in response to a secret safety report seen by Reuters, whereas the Worldwide Committee of the Purple Cross has stated hundreds had been displaced final 12 months.
“We are in a vicious cycle where new hubs of violence could be created,” stated Carolina Montes, the director of the Environmental Regulation division at Externado College in Bogota.
Land reform efforts in different international locations have additionally confronted delays and issues.
In South Africa, successive African Nationwide Congress (ANC) governments have launched efforts to switch farmland from white to Black house owners. The repeatedly delayed goal is to switch 30% of farmland by 2030.
Lecturers have estimated about 20% of farmland owned by white farmers in 1994 has handed into Black arms, both by means of authorities applications or non-public purchases, however opinions range extensively on whether or not vital progress has been made.
Brazil distributed 221 million acres, settling round 1.4 million households, between 1993 and 2018, whereas the administration of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who left workplace this 12 months, redistributed about 250,000 acres to Indigenous communities and poor farmers.
Some Colombian officers are urging the federal government to redouble its efforts.
Comptroller Common Carlos Rodriguez, Colombia’s prime fiscal oversight official, lately instructed a discussion board: “If immediate and effective measures are not taken, the dream of access to land and rural development for millions of Colombians will remain an empty promise.”
