In the last decades the need or importance of land reforms has been a topic in the agenda of most developing countries. Perhaps, as a consequence of the reports and special interest that development banks have dedicated to the topic, where they have been able to demonstrate the correlation that exists between poverty and inequality and land concentration.
For example, the World Bank in the 2006[1] report remarked that land is a key asset for development and that ownership facilitates access to credit market, increases an insurance value, facilitates influence in local politics, allows communities to engage in socially collective actions, permits the creation of social networks and influences positively social dynamics. So for developing agencies and academics, land and agricultural reforms and access to property mechanisms in countries are a mechanism to alleviate poverty of the rural areas, were most of the developing income continues to come from farming.[2]
Besides from the correlation that exists between land concentration[3] and inequality and poverty, land issues are a very sensitive topic in Colombia. The latter due to the close relation that violence and land issues that have besieged Colombia for more than 50 years.
With that in mind, the purpose of this paper is to make a brief overview of the history of Colombia’s land reforms attempts and the cause of its failures, explain the reason why some scholars believe that there is a direct relation with land concentration and the inner conflict that the country faces, narrate the role of land reform in transitional justice in the Colombian process and finally to conclude how there might be a real change in the light of the Peace Negotiations that are taking place between las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government in the Havana.
A failed history of land reforms
After the Colombian independence on 1810, there was a massive and disorganized property adjudication campaign, encouraged by the government which needed to sell as much vacant properties as possible in order to obtain revenues to pay for the debts that war had left. Property was obtained through “individual occupation” and work in the colonized land for a period of 10 years.[4] However, the policy was executed with no planning.[5] In turn, the result was the adjudication of vast territories or, in other words, the result was land concentration in the hands of some property elites[6].
Simultaneously, contracts of land exploitation by none owners became very popular[7]. The purpose of the contracts was basically that in large land extensions the owner would lease a lot of its property to a settler, there the person and his family could have a place to live and raise some cattle and crops. Depending on the way of payment from the settler to the land owner the contract was stipulated as a lease (this was when the person would pay with its work in the rest of the property or would pay with money) or as an “aparceria” contract (the person would pay with a percentage of the dividends obtained from the lot exploitation). In the mid 1920 ‘s more than 2.500 settlers with more than 20 years of possession that demanded to become legal property owners. So the rivalry between owners and settlers became very strong.
Between 1924 and 1936 serious social conflicts related to property arose in different areas of the country. The tensions were the consequence of the disputes that resulted from the claims of property that settlers (that had worked the land for more than 10 years) did over territories that were supposed to be owned by large property owners. Conflicts got more severe with the implementation of judicial actions for property protection –such as eviction.
The tensions led to the promulgation of Law 47 of 1926 and to the decision of the Supreme Court of Justice related to property titles in 1926. Law 47 searched to stimulate agriculture by stimulating agricultural education and as well it tried to address the land concentration issues ruling that properties that were bigger than 500 hectares that were exploited by tenants (arrendatarios) had to be divided in lots or “parcelas”. Under the same logic, the Supreme Court of Justice determined that an original title of property transfer from the Government to private parties was need in order to proof the property right[8] in property disputes.
With the arrival to power of the Liberal party (closer to left ideologies) in 1934 more social policies were adopted[9], to the point that the Constitution of 1886 was reformed[10]. The constitutional change established that the right to property is limited by its social function, implying that property entails obligations to society. The ladder instituted the idea that public utilities of social interests are more important than personal interest[11]. However the tensions still existed, more settlers went to the country side due to the high prices of food and coffee. Therefore more land was demanded, and the landowners were not willing to let go of their territories.
In attention to the new sprit of the social function of property, Law 200 of 1936 was issued. It aimed to legalize properties of “dubious” background, clarify the property titles, stipulate more strict conditions for tenant expulsion, discourage aparceria contracts, incentivize productive land use, and promote a real agrarian reform. In other words, it gave the settlers the possibility to become owners with a more lenient evidence system and through a special territorial jurisdiction. As well, the law stated that the land, even if it already was private property, that was unutilized for more than 10 years, should go back to the hands of the government.
However, the Law brought negative consequences. The fear of property owners of being sewed lead to a massive expulsion of settlers that had “aparceria” or tenant contracts.
Up to that point the adjudicated areas of great extension were much higher than the ones of small proportions. According to Arango, between 1910 and 1937, 91% of the adjudicated areas were of an extension higher than 20 hectares. In so, it seems that the modifications stablished in 1936 were a way to end with the “aparceria” contracts and to transform the large unproductive landstates into productive capitalist areas. In other words, the bid that the government made for a land reform failed.
Right after 1940, the conservative political party (identified with an ideology closer to the right) won the President elections. President López Pumarejo promoted Law 100 of 1944, as a counter reform to the modifications introduced by Law 200. Perhaps the most meaningful reform was that the partnership contracts were considered of national value and that the time frame for a territory to be considered as a vacant property of the State passed from 10 to 15 years.[12]
The social “gains” that had been obtained were eliminated, so the social unrest continue to grow, specially in remote areas.
After a period of long disorder, that passed through the era called “the Violence” as a consequence of political parties confrontations, Law 135 of 1961, was intended to become the “true agrarian” reform. The Law intended to restructure the land tenure, promote production and productivity, increase the wellbeing of the rural population, preserve the natural resources and promote the farming life.
During 1962 and 1966 not much was accomplished with the law, but in 1967 the figures of land expropriation, in order to redistribute the land, increased. However, more social turmoil arose with the promulgation of Law 1 of 1962, which regulated the “aparceria” contracts. With this more settlers got evicted of their possession. Meanwhile, President Lleras Restrepo in order to obtain the support of the farmers in the process of the land reforms, incentivized the creation of the Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos (ANUC). The organization effectively empowered many farmers and settlers, to the point that in the decade of the 70’s members of the organizations lead campaigns of land “recuperation” which in turn were seen as land occupation by large property owners.
However, for the second time in the history of the country, not much was achieved, the efforts of land redistribution were fruitless due to political pressures and the land that was obtained through expropriation was in bad conditions.
However large owners’ fear of being expropriated persisted, so they pressured the government to change the law and in the Pacto de Chicoral of 1972 (a meeting that was called by President Pastrana with the presence of rural guilds and congressman) the government agreed to end with the land reform policy. Instead, through Laws 4 and 5 of 1973 and the Law 6 of 1974, an agricultural reform was proposed. The model that was implemented deposited agriculture development in the hands of great landowners. The idea was to reinforce a policy of productivity and commercialization through the Integral rural development program (DRI due to its name in Spanish). Their migrant farmers should leave the rural areas and they should be absorbed in the manufacture industry[13]. For Gonzalo Sánchez, head of the Center for Historical Memory, this meant a burial in the government interests in land redistribution issues.[14] On the contrary, the adopted strategy was to stabilize the farmer’s economy in the integrated regions.
After a long period of lack of communication between the rural areas and the central government, and of social turmoil, as it will be described in the next section of the document, the government finally dared to propose a new agrarian reform in the Law 30 of 1988. There, under the initiative of President Barco the reform searched to increase the adequate land exploitation in a context of social use of rural property. The idea was to invest in infrastructure, promote access to credit, improve the well-being of the population, and promote agricultural education of farmers, all this in the designated areas of more needs. However, the isolation of the tradition political class and form the public opinion, turned into a barrier for the concretion of the public policies in the process of social rehabilitation and decentralization of the political administrative arena.
During the 80’s and early 90’s, the conditions continued to force farmers into the urban areas. Finally in the midst of the 90’s, with little or almost no good vacant land to settle in, another agrarian reform was proposed through the Law 160 of 1994. The reform aimed to use the market as a vehicle to fulfill its purposes. So, the way to obtained property passed from the encouragement of occupation to regular acquisition mechanisms; the farmers were supposed to negotiate the price of the land with the owner and then they should inform the government in order for the transaction to take place. The government estimated to redistribute approximately 1 million hectares, but only half of that amount was reallocated. However, according to Ibañez, only 5.6% of the land that was adjudicated in that period was part of the land redistribution process, the rest were adjudication of vacant lands.[15]
Up to this point, the history of Colombia has showed a series of attempts to encourage the land reform and redistribution, periods that have been marked by the pressures in the political arena, were the Liberal party intended to promote a change, while the attempts were restricted by the conservative party and the large owner elites. However, after the 90’s, and perhaps even before, the problem with land in Colombia was not only related to access to property but it also became a problem of land restitution of property.
The intimate relation between land reform failures and the actual conflict
The violence situation in Colombia at the beginning of the century had reached to unmanageable levels. According to the report “Basta ya” of the Centre of Historic Memory (CHM), between the period of 1958 and 2012 there were more than 220.000 casualties imputable to the conflict in the country[16]. Besides from the casualties, according to the government figures and research of the CHM, between 1985 and 2013 there have been extortions, 25.007 missing people, 1,754 victims of sexual violence, 6,421 infants recruited by the armed groups, 4,744,046 displaced people, 27,023 kidnaps (between 1970 and 2010) and 10,189 victims of land minds (between 1982 and 2012). Such violation of human rights was the consequence of political violence, drug trafficking, and wrongdoings between paramilitary and guerrilla groups, among others.
Now, the question is, what is the correlation of the land concentration and land reform attempts in the Colombian conflict?
For the Conflict Historic Commission[17], which was composed by 12 different scholars of different disciplines, the causes of the conflict are many and there is no consent of a sole cause. However, for the author, Eduardo Pizarro Leongomez, one of the mentioned causes that allowed the conflict to persist for such long time, is the troubles that arise in relation to the land distribution in the country. When reading the report one can conclude that even if there have been efforts to address the topic there have been many failures in the process, as we saw in the ladder section of this paper.
In order to understand the relation between land concentration and violence, lets recall a little the failed reform attempts that were described in the above section.
During the 1920´s there was a huge migration of rural inhabitants to the urban areas partially as a result of the high prices of wages in the urban areas in comparison to the income that a farmer obtain. These lead to an increase in food prices, which in turn lead to an increment in farming. During the same period, the high prices of coffee (they almost duplicated) in the international market, stimulated an exodus of people to the contrysight with the intention of colonizing “tierras baldias” or vacant lands. Then the tensions in “property states” were the titles were not very clear, grew.
In addition to the land conflicts that arose in the country since the mid 1920’s, the political violence between parties grew, conservative vs liberal, party as a consequence of the tensions between large landowners and peasants and workers. With the murder of the liberal political leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan (1948) the violence between parties incremented dramatically. Political persecution, during the government of Laureano Gómez against liberals, implied that the political conflicts would also grow into an armed confrontation amongst civilians. The violence lead to several violations of human rights from both armed groups of parties. In terms of land issues the problems incremented and ended in serious land plundering. Academic Paul Oquist calculated that 2 million hectares, which is more or less equivalent to 11% of the farmable land were plundered.[18]
Correspondingly, the agrarian struggles associated to the continuity of the conflict for land were directly associated with the birth of liberal guerrillas, with the paramilitary groups and especially to the political platform that gave birth the agrarian proposals of the FARC.[19]
Right after the failure of Agricultural reform of 1961, with the Chicoral Pact and the change of policy of the Pastrana Administration, it is said that the government’s decisions only deepened the inequality gap and created the conditions for narcotraffic to increase. So in that period many coffee plantations were replaced by marihuana manors.[20] In the same period, the guerrillas began to have closer ideology identification with communist factions, which in turn led to the government to adopt a very strict “National Security Statute” that gave birth to the concept of internal enemy.
Between 1956 and 1974 violence diminished as a consequence of the Frente Nacional, which was political coalition made between the liberals and the conservatives to share power in the government. During that period the political struggle diminished, but the violence that was believed to be stable, continued to raise in the period of 1982 to 1995 due to the expansion of the guerrillas that were formed defending communist ideals, the increase of narcotraffic, the appearance of paramilitary groups, the State reforms and the State failures.
Up to the mid 90’s the government continued to face with the tensions that arose at the beginning of the century between the owners of large extensions of property and settlers or farmers that were trying to have their property recognized. For Alberto Molano, the first violent lines that divided the population into two groups, revolved around Law 200 and that are the roots of the armed conflict. For him, the law was interpreted in two different was, the farmers “campesinos” understood the idea of “social function od property” as a right that they had to obtain land that was not farmed, disregarding if they had a title for it or not. On the other hand, the land owners understood this right, in many regions, as a threat that needed to be rejected with the use arms by their workers. By the time that the Agrarian reform was issued, that is 1961, the political violence and confrontations had arrived to alarming numbers.
So, for some the “inherited” land traditions ended in the high levels of inequality and land concentration that the country has. This was the incubator for insurgent ideas and lack of state presence in many areas of the country. The clear opposition between landowners, and political pressures that they did to the government in order to eliminate the “well” intentioned land reform laws that existed became a barrier for equality and a catalyst for violence.
However, in addition to the “inherited tensions”, or “inherited inequality” the increase in the 80’s of narcotraffic and the intensification of the internal armed conflict increase the “land struggles” in many regions of the country. In fact, the expansion of territorial control, the profit of natural resources, the land concentration and agglutination as a form of “war prize”, in addition to the need to establish land corridors for the transportation of weapon and illicit drugs made land usurpation a central issue in the “modern” Colombian armed conflict. So in the end what occurred is that the protection for territory was not seen as a need to satisfy basic rights of the population, but as an asset for war.[21]
According to the government, the ladder strategies have caused the expulsion of more than 4.4 million peasants. In theory, more than half of the displaced population had property rights. Nonetheless, the problem is that only 31.2% of the land had formal property titles, the rest are informal rights. As a consequence, it is believed, that more than 2 million hectares (according to the government other figures mention that 4 million hectares) are abandoned or stolen.
In the period between 2000 and 2010, academics indicate that there was a tendency to increase the figures of land concentration. At the beginning of 2000, the land that was more concentrated was around isolated regions, were the production was other than agriculture, for example in the case of natural resource exploitation. By the end of 2010, the concentration was still in the same isolated areas, but it is evident that in the areas where there was paramilitary of guerrilla presence the concentration of land increased. However, IBAÑEZ indicates that it was expected to be a higher percentage of land concentration as a consequence of the armed conflict, but that the change in land concentration may not be perceptible due to land transferences in the land market. The transferences do not affect land concentration figures. Nonetheless it is evident that there was a change in owners in the decade. During that same period there was an increase in property owners of 1.4 million, 10% of the people that presented themselves as land owners on 2000, incremented their properties by 2010, and 7.79% of the population increased the size of their actual properties. In conclusion for her, there is no clear way to explain the causes of land concentration in Colombia, due to a lack of information; however, for her there is a clear correlation between the armed conflict and the appearance of new owners, and the change in size or property between 2000 and 2009.[22]
The problem, seems that the roots of the conflict where fed by the inequalities that persisted in land issues. However, after the 70’s the topic was left in oblivion. The issues that revolved around the area were forgotten and the voice of the peasants was silenced by the strong internal conflict. As a result of the peace negotiations with the Paramilitaries, and through the Law of Peace and justice, the topic was brought back to the table.
The role of land reforms in transitional justice
So, at the beginning of the century the land issues in Colombia became a problem of redistribution and of restoration. On 2003, the Government managed, to negotiate a peace agreement with the one of the actors of the armed conflict, the Autodefensas Armadas de Colombia (AUC). 34 groups of combatants demobilized; 31,671 members gave up arms.[23] After this process, as a main component of the transitional process, victim reparation measures were included. One of the mechanisms of the process, contemplated in the law 975 of 2005, is the process of restitution. According to the Law, this means that the victims of the paramilitary groups need to be recompensed, that means; taken back to the status they were before being victimized, this includes the restitution of the lands that might been stripped from.
Unfortunately, under that legislation the process of reparation took longer than expected. For example, the first condemn against the heads of the AUC was on June of 2010 in the emblematic case of Mampujan[24], ten years after the commission of the crime and 5 years after the expedition of the law that talked about victim reparation, the decision was confirmed by the Supreme Court of Justice in 2011.
In the midst of victim reparation and the inefficiency of the system created by the Justice and Peace law, the government passed the Law of Victims and Land Restitution (Law 1448 of 2011). President Santos, aimed through the creation of this law, among other things, to create a mechanism to restitute millions of abandoned and stripped lands as a consequence of the conflict. This law, even if criticized by many, contains a very important achievement in the Colombian context, and that is the recognition of victims of an armed conflict-before the legislation did not recognize the existence of an armed conflict, therefore international humanitarian law could not be applied.
So the regulation indicates that a person can ask for the restitution of property if he or she was forced to sell it, if he or she was threatened to sell it, if the titles were falsified, if he or she was obliged to sell the land due to violence and the conditions were unfavorable. The restitution land is only for civilians that were victimized after 1991 and up to 2021.
The claim can be seen as a mixed procedure; first an administrative part that is the inscription in the register of disposed lands, and a judicial process that is called the restitution claim or “accion of restitution”. In order for the process to be done, the Government created the Unit for Land Restitution (UGRT due to its initials in Spanish), which is supposed to keep the register of the claims and as well of keeping a record of the land that is claimed for and that is adjudicated. The unit is the entity responsible of presenting the claim to the judge and in case that no restitution is done to perform the compensation of the land. [25]
The restitution claim is an only instance procedure, which is taken to a special court contemplated for such purpose (Special Land Restitution Judges). This only instance jurisdiction is created under the principles of transitional justice and are meant to solve its cases in a very expedite and efficient manner.[26] To September of 2014, in 3 years of application of the law 500 decisions had been published and 1.137 properties of 28.582 hectares have been restored. However 21% of the decisions are unachievable. [27]
Nonetheless for International Amnesty the new legislation contemplates a series of issues that are problematic. For example, to be repaired, the person must be registered as a victim of the conflict in the terms of the national registered, however some people that were displaced due to the consequences of the war (like glifosfato aspersions against dugs) are not contemplated to be victims.
Another conflicting mechanism that arises from the new law is related to the settlement agreements that the victims can agree upon with the government in order to obtain reparation. Initially, under Law 975, victims had to go to the judiciary to obtain a decision that recognized them as victims and ordered the compensation. However, under Law 1448, the victims can settle with the Government directly and ask for administrative reparation.
In the first scenario, under the competence of the judiciary, the money to pay de reparation would come from the “Fondo de Reparación de Víctimas”, a fund that was created under the Law 975 and which income should come from the money that the Paramilitaries returned or the lands that they confessed had stripped. The problem is that not much land had been recuperated and not many resources have been awarded to the fund. Therefore, the reparations under this mechanism seem to be only in paper. On the second option, in the case of the administrative reparation, the amounts awarded are much lower than the ones that could be ordered by the judge, but the money would come from the budget that the government adjudicated to the purpose. So in many cases the victims would prefer to settle and give up their judicial rights and ask for the administrative reparation. But, even if the administrative mechanism is more expedite, the biggest problem with this option, is that information that could be crucial in clarifying the commission of felonies will not be reported to the judicial system, becoming an obstacle for the truth search.[28]
Another issue that Amnesty international denounced, which needs to be seen with much attention, is related to the problem of original titles. It is believed that one out of 5 rural areas have problems with the formal registry of property, and that out of small farmers (less than 13 hectares) half does not have formal property rights[29]. So, there is a fear that the properties that are restituted are the ones whose owners have a proper property title.[30]
The lack of original titles is also related to a problem of inefficacy of the institutions for mapping and knowing how land is allocated in the country. As the OECD states in the Overview of Colombia 2015[31], few regions possess land registration information. The latter, because the Instituto Geográfico Agustin Codazzi (IGAC), which is the entity that has the duty to perform such task, sometimes does not do it due to political pressures and sometimes lack of resources.
So in the end, the new context of transitional justice in Colombia brings a new era of land redistribution and reparation policies. However, we can evidence that some of the problems related to the issues persist. For example, the lack of expedite and simple mechanisms to legalize property rights, the lack of coordination between entities in the process, and how the mechanisms have become a way to attend the victims of the conflict but not to battle the inequalities in land issues that have persisted for many decades.
Peace negotiations in Colombia
In the midst of the process of peace construction in Colombia, the Government since 2011 has been negotiating with the Fuerzas Armadas de Colombia (FARC). Different agreements have been achieved, being the first one the most important for the purposes of this paper, the ones related to land.
For context purpose, let’s remember that the FARC was created during the 1960’s as a communist guerrilla that in theory fought for the rights of the farmers (many things have happened in the 50 years of violence, and only for context purpose this should be kept in mind). Therefore in the petitions and consensus that was achieved the following terms:
- Special protection for farmers labor rights;
- The creation of a special land fund of free distribution for farmers without land, with special subsidies for its acquisition;
- Special project to legalize the property titles of farmers that live in informality; and
- A proper register of property for the rural areas
The process of negotiation is still going on. President Santos gave it a final deadline of four months and the deadline will be met in November of 2015[32].
If peace is finally agreed with last FARC, then the problems that have been haunting the country for almost a century will finally be tackled.
Conclusion
After passing through a broad narrative of the history of the country, it is evident that one of the biggest problems of the country is that there are no clear limits of the property of land in Colombia. Some had and were disposed, some have but the law does not recognize them, and some land that is not being used, that has an owner, is just left in the oblivion.
Problems of lack of institutional coordination are evident (the IGAC has in theory the duty of keeping the land registers, but under the La1448 the land that is restituted is registered in another unit of the state), institutions that should be strong and powerful do not have the budget to do so.
So, perhaps Colombia is facing for the first time an opportunity to be coherent, and avoid that the contradiction between economic interest and political powers struggle with the reforms made in paper. Let’s hope, that after the reforms are issued, political pressures don’t move the pendulum back and the reforms that are done, are just erased after the government caves.
However the question that still caves is, will there be finally justice in the midst of the conflict?
Author : Alejandra Tarazona, juillet 2015
[1] World Development Report 2006, Equity and Development. World Bank. Available here[2] ALVIAR, Helena. Redistributing land in Latin America: caught between Economic Development and Positivism. Law Yale. Available here
[3] One of the most serious problems that Colombia faces is the lack of information in relation to the land concentration issues. The most recent information that is available is in the IGAC-CEDE. “Gran atlas de distribución de la propiedad rural en Colombia”. 2012. Facultad de Economía, Universidad de Antioquia, Gobernación de Antioquia (en prensa). There they studied the period 2000 to 2009, and used the Gini coefficient as an indicator to measure the degree of concentration of rural property and the incomes. The closer to 1, the more concentration of property (few owners with a lot of land). As a result they found that in Colombia the owner Gini coefficient for 2009 is of 0,875. However, as they state in the report, the information used also has many problems due to informal property and some cases were the property is under the name of another person. Available here
[4] Law 48 of 1882 stated that the person that wanted to become owners should make productive use of the land for a period of 10 years.
[5] IBAÑEZ, Ana Maria, MUÑOZ, Juan Carlos. La persistencia de la concentración de la tierra en Colombia: ¡Qué pasó entre 2000 y 2010?. Notas de Política. Universidad de los Andes, Agosto 2011. Available at:
[6] Recopilación de las leyes y disposiciones vigentes. Sobre tierras baldías. Available here
[7] MOLANO, Alfredo. Fragmentos de la historia del conflicto armado (1920-2010). En Version final informes comision historica del conflicto. Available here
[8] In other words the proof of ownership was a duty of the landlord and not of the land tenant. Decisions of May 27 of 1920 and then of April 15 of 1926 of the Supreme Court of Justice.
[9] The plan was called “La Revolución en Marcha” or the Marching Revolution under the government of President Alfonso Pumarejo
[10] The reform was billed the 6 of August of 1936.
[11] http://www.banrepcultural.org/node/32884
[12] ARANGO, Esquema de políticas de reforma agraria en Colombia. Lecturas de Economía No, 23. Medellín, Mayo-Agosto 1987.
[13] ARANGO, pg 211-214
[14] SANCHEZ, Gonzalo. Prólogo. La tierra en disputa. Memorias de despojo y resistencia campesina en la Costa Caribe (1960-2010). Centro de Memoria Histórica. Ediciones Semana. Bogotá,2010. Available here
[15] IBAÑEZ, pg 2.
[16] Op. Cit. ¡Basta Ya!, pg 32. In the text the authors clarify that even if the National Unique Victim Register determines that in the period between 1985-2013, there were 166.069 fatal victims as result of the armed conflict. The problem with such figure is that it does nos include the casualties of combatants and it only keeps a register since 1985, when deaths due to violence began years before.
[17] The Commission was created as an instruction of the Presidency of Colombia the 5th of august of 2014, where it stablished the report of the comisión should be the main input for the understanding of the complexities of the conflict and the responsabilities of whom have participated or had any say in the process of stablishing the truth. The complete report can be found here
[18] Basta ya! Centro de Memoria Histórica. Los orígenes, las dinámicas y el crecimiento del conflicto armado. Pg. 120.
[19] Ibidem, pg 127.
[20] Ibidem. Pg 131
[21] SANCHEZ, pf 18
[22] IBAÑEZ, pg 4.
[23] The process of demobilization was regulated with the Law 782 of 2002, Decree 128 of 2003, Decree 3360 of 2003 and Decree 2767 of 2004. For more information you can consult: http://www.verdadabierta.com/justicia-y-paz/244-la-historia/auc/54-periodo4
[24] In that specific case in March 10 of 2000 a group of AUC members murdered 11 farmers and displaces 1,100 people from the rural town of Mampujan. Information available here
[25] So, under the Law of Victims and Land Restitution, the process of restoration can be done in 3 different contexts; i) those that have a title and just want to recover the land that they were disposed from; ii) those that were working vacant lands (the law continues to enable the possibility of acquiring property through occupation); and, iii) the formalization through a judicial process for those that were invading private lands.
[26] ABC para jueces en materia de restitución de tierras. Ministerio de Agricultura y Desarrollo Rural. Available here
[27] http://www.semana.com/especiales-comerciales/especiales/multimedia/asi-han-sido-los-fallos-de-los-jueces-de-restitucion-de-tierras/403835-3
[28] Lay de Víctimas y Restitución de Tierras . Amnistía Internacional. 2012- Available here
[29] Así transfromarían a Colombia los acuerdos logrados con las FARC. La Silla Vacia. Available here
[30] Ibidem, Amnesty International. Amnesty International says that when the claim is done, the number of the registration and characteristics of the land need to be given. However, the problem is that many farmers that were displaced may not have the titles of the relevant information, either because they lost it in the process of leaving their homes or because they have never formalized their property. In other words, the disputes for land property are still related to access to land formalities.
[31] OECD. Overview of Colombia 2015. Available here
[32] This paper has been written two month before the historical engagement of September 2015, to finalize peace dealing. This point is the subject of the second article published on the site of IHEJ by Helen Calame and Joël Hubrecht.
