Colombia’s land reform under a new president, Olof Blomqvist. Open Democracy
When Juan Manuel Santos in his inauguration speech said that, "all the land of those displaced by violence, regardless of whose hands it might be in today, will be returned to its rightful owner", many assumed it was mostly rhetoric. But Colombia's new president confirmed something of his intention on September 7 when he presented a sweeping and ambitious new land reform bill. If implemented, the Ley de Tierras could have a profound impact on Colombia's peace prospects.
The land issue has been at the heart of Colombia's decades-long conflict. The first manifestos of the left-wing guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) focused almost exclusively on land reforms, mainly in response to the government's failure to adequately curb large-scale landowners (latifundios) that had come to dominate agriculture at the expense of traditional subsistence farmers. As FARC and other guerrilla movements became more influential and active, landowners set up armed self-defense groups in the early 1980s to protect their holdings. The groups were initially legalised by the government and supported by the army, but they soon merged into paramilitary factions and became embroiled in drug trafficking.
Organised under the umbrella group, United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the paramilitaries started a bloody campaign to expand their land holdings, mostly at the expense of the small-holding poor and indigenous farmers. The result was a displacement crisis that has left Colombia with one of the largest IDP populations in the world, second only to Sudan's. Rights groups estimate that more than three million people lost their homes in the 1980s and 1990s, the majority from paramilitary violence, and more than 5.5 million hectares of land was seized. The vast majority of the displaced moved to urban areas where most continue to live in desperate conditions, often without access to basic services.
The AUC demobilised between 2003 and 2006 after lengthy negotiations with the administration of then-president Alvaro Uribe, but very little of the seized land has been returned to victims. Many paramilitaries have divested land to dummy companies and front men to prevent it from ending up in the victims' compensation fund established by the government. So far, only some 6,600 hectares have been returned to the fund, a fraction of the total.
The Uribe presidency, while successful in its military push against the guerrillas, was widely criticised for not giving higher priority to the land issue. Laws guaranteeing both support for the displaced and the return of land were poorly implemented, and redist