Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean, Population

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: The Displaced Demand Reparations, and the Truth

Constanza Vieira

CARTAGENA, Colombia, Feb 9 2005 (IPS) - A visitor to the picturesque Caribbean resort town of Cartagena does not have to go far to see one of the effects of Colombia’s civil war – tens of thousands of people displaced by the violence, living in the vast slums that ring the city.

The population of this coastal city in northern Colombia has climbed from just over 600,000 five years ago to around one million people today, due to the huge numbers of people who have fled the armed conflict.

According to Colombia’s Comptroller-General’s Office, 1.4 million people fled their homes as a result of the war between 2000 and 2004, while the Consultancy on Human Rights and Displacement reports that the country’s displaced population – one of the world’s largest – has grown to 3.2 million since 1985.

The displaced are demanding "to know the truth about what happened, so we will know what we are supposed to forgive," a member of the League of Displaced Women in Cartagena told IPS.

The League groups 350 women who were forced to flee their homes, along with others who have taken them in, sharing what little they have.

Through the Caribbean office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), IPS spoke with around 30 members of the League. Because several of them have received death threats, their names will not be revealed.

Colombia’s Caribbean coastal region, where Cartagena is located, is dominated by right-wing paramilitary groups, which make up one of the factions involved in this South American country’s four-decade conflict.

The women interviewed lost everything. Some of them have been fleeing the war for 10 years, others left their homes three or four years ago.

Widows, orphans or mothers who have lost their sons in the armed conflict, they are tired of talking about their individual cases, and say they will only do so as part of a national legal process. And if they fail to obtain justice that way, they will turn to international courts of justice.

"The last thing we want is to forget, because in forgetting lies impunity," says one. "We want to know who exactly was responsible for this humanitarian disaster in Colombia."

The women accuse not only the paramilitaries, but the army and the leftist guerrillas – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) – as well.

Many paramilitary groups, which are active in a number of areas throughout the country, are linked by the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), an umbrella organisation.

The League keeps its own records, where it documents the abuses suffered by the women, the alleged perpetrators, and where the victims have filed complaints.

"We have more and more evidence that will help us get the Colombian state to make reparations some day, and to track down those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity," Patricia Guerrero, a lawyer who advises the League, told IPS.

In the meantime, the women continue to face the challenges of everyday life. "What for any woman in a developed country merely involves turning on a faucet, for us is a question of life itself, the lives of our children," said one of the women.

Twenty litres of water cost 20 cents of a dollar in the shantytown, and residents must lug it from a tap that was recently installed around half a kilometre from the improvised shacks built by the victims of forced displacement on land that used to be a swamp.

But the water is not even potable, and must be boiled before it can be consumed.

Toiling in the informal economy, the women do whatever they can to put food on the table for their children, educate them, and provide them with clean water.

Despite the death threats, belonging to the League has changed their lives, they say. In the group’s offices, the logos of the UNHCR and World Food Programme (WFP) "are our shields," adds one of the activists.

Now they share the dream of building their own homes, with international assistance. Displaced Colombians depend on donor aid to cover 60 percent of their needs. The state assists just 30 percent of those who have been forced to flee the violence.

"You are chased away by the bombing, and you don’t dare to go back. Then you come here, and you feel an emptiness. People look at you with discrimination," says one member of the League.

"I lost my 150-hectare farm," says another, who shrugs her shoulders when asked who is living there now.

"I have been displaced by the armed conflict, which President (Alvaro) Uribe does not want to admit exists. I am a survivor of many massacres," she says.

"They burn down our farms, we lose our land," says yet another member of the group. "I was economically stable, and I was left without employment when the paramilitaries showed up in Urabá," a banana-growing region in the northwest where the guerrillas have also committed war crimes.

She says there are mass graves in the area where she lived. "The owners of Urabá don’t want the truth about what happened, and what is still happening, to come out," she adds.

"But someday there has to be justice and reparations. There are thousands of widows. Where are the disappeared? We want to know the truth about those who have been killed," she says.

Indeed, truth, justice and reparations are three concepts that are the focus of much debate these days in Colombia.

In draft laws, proposals, forums and documents, the government, parliament, human rights activists and academics are discussing these three terms, with a view to creating a legal framework for the paramilitary disarmament process that began in late 2003.

International donors, including the European Union, the United States, Canada, Japan, the United Nations and multilateral lenders, are also pressing for a clear definition and new legislation.

In the final statement adopted by a donors conference last week in Cartagena, donors underlined that aid for the paramilitary demobilisation process would only be forthcoming after specific legislation in line with international law was created, in order to hold the members of irregular armies accountable for human rights abuses and other misdeeds.

Although the current disarmament process only involves the paramilitaries, the legal framework should apply to an eventual peace process with the guerrillas as well, say the international donors.

A total of 4,699 paramilitary fighters have laid down their arms in nine collective ceremonies since December 2003.

But it is not clear how many more could take part in the process, which is a product of negotiations with the right-wing government, because there is no reliable estimate of the number of members of paramilitary groups, which were created by drug traffickers and large landowners with army support in the early 1980s.

The paramilitary militias admit that the first arms they were given were armed forces weapons.

Paramilitary fighters who hand over their weapons are free to go their own way after merely promising that they will no longer break the law, as long as they are not facing legal charges at the time.

But if they break the law again, they will receive "a minimum prison sentence of 14 years," the government’s High Commissioner for Peace, Luis Carlos Restrepo, told IPS.

Restrepo’s negotiations with the paramilitary chiefs, many of whom are drug barons, are taking place "behind closed doors" in Santa Fe del Ralito in northeastern Colombia.

According to the provisional agreement under which the demobilisation is taking place, any paramilitary fighter who turns over his weapons and is later found to have committed a crime against humanity will later be tracked down by the justice system.

The United Nations and leading human rights organisations like Amnesty International blame the paramilitaries for over 80 percent of the atrocities committed in the conflict. The armed forces and the insurgents are responsible for the rest.

The government will submit a draft law on the question of "truth, justice and reparations" to parliament on Thursday. The point, said Restrepo, is to achieve the demobilisation of the top paramilitary commanders.

"A legal framework without concrete results involving peace is based on uncertainty. Only one that is based on results has credibility," Uribe told the foreign donors last week, explaining why the demobilisation process began even before clear rules had been agreed.

Liberal Party Senator Rafael Pardo, a former defence minister, said the question is to dismantle "the essence" of the paramilitary groups, that form part of "a project of accumulation of political power and economic wealth through weapons."

"The paramilitaries are setting up a political project, from their camps. They are deciding who to support in the next elections – and who to veto," said the senator.

A group of legislators of different stripes, including Pardo, attempted over the past year to reconcile their own bill on truth, justice and reparations with the one being drafted by the government. But the talks collapsed on Feb. 2.

When the lawmakers introduced their own bill, Restrepo accused them, and the press, of "ambushing" the demobilisation process.

Pardo said the disagreements arise from the dissident legislators’ demand that "the armed groups truly break up, and lose the power bases that they have accumulated through weapons, as well as the wealth obtained through violence."

One of the members of the League of Displaced Women said the group is demanding, as reparations, "that we be given back the land that was taken from us, so that we can plant again, in safety."

UNHCR official Roberto Meier commented to IPS that an abstract concept of "return" does not work when it comes to the displaced. "What good does it do to return them to their land, if one of the armed groups once again attacks that community?"

The UNHCR is demanding "public services, like health and education, and the presence of the state" in the regions that today are under the influence of one or another of the armed groups, added Meier.