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Four years later, Colombia's Peace Agreement advances at a snail's pace

Point 5: Victims and Transitional Justice

Point 5 is one of the most important points of the Agreement. The Single Registry of Victims includes 9.031.048 victims, of which 7.299.457 are subject to direct attention, as of June 2020. Likewise, the annual average of compensated victims between 2012 and 2019 was 103.536. In 2020, the Victims Unit delivered 72.539 compensations, which shows that, if the same trend continues, compensation increases by 40.1% each year. This, however, is not enough, as it would take 43 years to compensate all the victims. Likewise, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace has accredited more than 300 thousand victims. These numbers account for the country’s unpaid debt to the victims.

On land restitution issues, as of June 2020, the Land Unit (URT) had received 125.513 applications for registration in the Registry of Dispossessed and Abandoned Lands (RTDAF) by 95.926 individuals. Of these requests, 83.5% were handled by the URT and 94.1% are in microfocalized areas. On the other hand, the administrative processing of 81.820 applications was completed. As of June 30, 2020, 5.811 rulings had been issued that resolved 11.265 requests from the Unit, which means that, of the total requests for restitution, only 5.5% had been resolved by a judge.

Regarding the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) by June 2020 the Sala de Reconocimiento de Verdad, de Responsabilidad y de Determinación de los Hechos y Conductas (Room for Recognition of Truth, Responsibility and Determination of Facts and Behavior), determined the opening of seven macro cases that are in the process of being expanded and investigated, ranging from false positives to the recruitment of children in the armed conflict.

The Missing Persons Search Unit, for its part, has created nine ongoing regional search plans that aim to search a total of 591 people. Regarding the reception of information, as of March 31, 2020, the Unit had received search requests corresponding to 5.389 missing persons and had established the status of 810 people, of which 591 were already included in a regional search plan. .

Finally, the Truth Commission has heard 11.118 victims; 38% of the guerrillas, 32% of the paramilitaries and 16% of the Public Force. By the end of 2019, the Commission had prepared 23 preliminary documents on patterns and explanatory contexts of the armed conflict that will help to create the final report of this institution. Regarding the issue of non-repetition, the Commission prepared nine documents that compile recommendations from the Dialogues for Non-repetition processes and the analysis of attacks on social leaders. The slaughter of social leaders, however, continues to increase and, in 2020 alone, 310 were killed, almost one a day.

Point 6: Implementation and verification

In the SIIPO, only the progress of the indicators that have a methodological sheet are reported, which must be constituted by each responsible entity and approved by the National Planning Department (DNP). Since the last multiparty report, there was an advance of 5 percentage points in the indicators that have a hanging file, reaching 74% of the indicators.

It is still worrying that 11.6% of the indicators with a hanging file do not have an information report on their progress. The entities that present delays to report are: the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Justice and Law and the Ministry of Health.

Regarding gender, the Agreement contemplates 130 measures related to this approach. However, these measures have made less progress than the total number of commitments in the Agreement. Only 9% of the 130 provisions have been implemented compared to 25% of the total Agreement, which is a low percentage.

Of the Land Fund, 36% have been given to women compared to 64% hectares given to men. In the PNIS, only 1.36% of the families with registered female holders had productive projects formulated and initiated.

This shows an imbalance for women and a need to improve the gender approach in the implementation of the Agreement.

Regarding ethnicity, the Agreement contemplates 80 measures related to this approach. Of these, only 10% have been fully implemented and none of the ethnic families have received support for productive projects. Likewise, of the approved Regional Plans, none has been agreed upon with the ethnic communities nor does it contain differential components.

At the beginning of 2020, 86% of indigenous families and 46% of Afro-Colombian families with a signed substitution agreements had not received the food security component. Likewise, 45% of Afro-Colombian families and 100% of indigenous families had not received technical assistance.

Slow pace

What is clear about the progress on each point is that, a little more than four years after the Agreement was signed, progress is very poor and very slow. However, there is still time to readjust the path. This, of course, depends on the National Government, to which several entities, such as Dejusticia and the Truth Commission itself, have called upon to fulfill the promises of the Agreement.

Not only does the security of the country depend on the Agreement, but also commitments to the international community and legal obligations arise. The Agreement represented not only the opportunity to end the oldest war in the South American continent, but also a commitment to reconciliation and social progress on many fronts.

The evident lack of political will slows down the implementation of the different points, which means that Colombia continues to be mired in very serious injustices while the murders of social leaders and ex-combatants continues, multiple paramilitary groups consolidate, the industrial production of coca paste continues, and peasants still do not see the promised reparation. In the face of the data, the Agreement needs to run like a hare to achieve its goals, and yet it is moving at a snail’s pace. Colombia needs to accelerate.

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