New funding for efforts to protect the land and property of
millions of internally displaced people (IDPs) in Colombia will
enable work to continue among displaced afro-Colombians on the
country's Pacific coast.

Nearly 2.9 million Colombians have been internally displaced by
conflict since 1997 with approximately 10 per cent of Colombia's
rural areas affected by forced movement.

Forced to move by threats from illegal armed groups, Colombia's
IDPs have lost homes, land and/or other property in the process and
have had little recourse to reclaiming them. Continued displacement
has had a significant impact on the economic, social and cultural
well-being of these families unable to restart normal lives.

However, since 2003, a programme led by the country's
presidential agency for social action, Acción Social and
supported by IOM, has been working to provide protection of the
property rights of IDPs, particularly in areas most affected by
land dispossession.

The 250,000 Euros from the Spanish Agency for International
Development Cooperation (AECID) is to support the protection,
formalization and restitution of lost land belonging to IDPs in the
Pacific coast area of Colombia where most afro-Colombians, the
group worst affected by displacement, live and come from.

IOM will also offer technical assistance from a team of lawyers,
engineers and other professionals to relevant government
authorities and afro-Colombian communities affected by violence and
displacement in the Departments of Chocó, Nariño and
Valle del Cauca Departments. Such assistance will help strengthen
local capacity to enforce existing laws on plundered property.

"We have come a long way since 2003 when work to design the
methods for protecting property rights began. It allowed us then to
protect nearly 4,800 parcels of land covering nearly 70,000
hectares. By 2008, nearly 92,000 land parcels covering 2.9 million
hectares were protected," said Diana Medrano, IOM project manager
in Colombia.

Since 2005, IOM has begun to train and transfer knowledge to
other organizations and affected communities on land and property
protection for IDPs. It has also set in motion the process of
registering abandoned lands and territories and varying, according
to need, the protection offered to ethnic groups.

The initiative, supported by 9 million Euros of funding from the
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Swedish development
agency, Sida, the World Bank, the European Union and Acción
Social, has helped protect the land of displaced people  in
116 municipalities across the country. But with nearly 225,000
newly displaced people registered in 2008 alone, there is still
much work to do.

For more information, please contact:

Jorge Gallo

IOM Bogota

Tel: + 5715946410 ext 142

E-mail:  "mailto:jgallo@iom.int">jgallo@iom.int