Colombia - In the midst of the construction of an agenda for long-lasting peace, Colombia is living a historic moment in which the post-conflict phase presents a great opportunity to build a new rural development architecture, in a country where 52 per cent of large-scale property is held by 1.15 per cent of the population.

The Forum on Land, Peace, and Post-Conflict, being held this week with support from the Mayor’s Office of Bogotá, Fundación Forjando Futuros, IOM, USAID and Oxfam, has brought national and international experts to lead a collective dialogue on rural development with a land focus.

The goal of the event is to formulate recommendations about land policy, rural development, and restitution, that aim to overcome current challenges in a possible post-conflict environment and that can be translated into useful recommendations for the peace agreements discussed in Cuba’s capital, Havana.

Participants will hold in-depth discussions about the possibilities being offered by the Government to Colombia’s peasants in the form of credits, subsidies and other benefits and rural public services, and will also provide input for the implementation of government programmes on efficient land use and holding, rural development, and land restitution for internally displaced persons.

This will occur, taking into account the unique registry information system for the Victims’ Unit, which had 4,790,317 registered displaced people as of June 2013.

Participants will analyze the current status of land restitution in Colombia from 2010 to 2014 and will make projections for the 2014-2018 period, and will look at the relevance of integrated agrarian reform for Colombia’s landless peasants.

As of August 2014, a total of 509 decrees related to land restitution had been published in the Land Restitution Unit and Superior Council’s website.  This represents only 2 per cent of the 66,166 requests presented by victims so far.  It is striking that 81 per cent of people affected by displacement or abandonment have not presented requests.

In June 2011, the Colombian Congress adopted the landmark Victims and Land Restitution Law, which aims to compensate some 350,000 families and return 2 million hectares of land over a 10-year period to persons displaced by conflict.

For more information please contact

Liliana Arias
IOM Colombia
Email: larias@iom.int
Tel: 571 3108198484