Colombia: Land theft put at 7m hectares

[Judi Lynn]

29 May 2011 Last updated at 18:11 ET
Colombia: Land theft put at 7m hectares

The Colombian government says almost seven million hectares of land has been stolen by armed groups involved in the country's civil conflict over the past 25 years.

Agriculture Minister Juan Camilo Restrepo said hundreds of thousands of families were driven from their land.

He said paramilitaries, rebels and drug dealers had used violence and fraud to take the land.

Colombia this week passed a law which aims to return the land to its owners.

More:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13591860

[Judi Lynn]

1. SOA Watch in Colombia

SOA Watch in Colombia
Written by Liz Deligio and Charity Ryerson, SOA Watch Illinois
SOA Watch visited Colombia in July as a member of the Ethics Commission of the human rights group Justicia y Paz.

The Commission publicizes human rights abuses in a number of specific communities in Colombia, where a brutal war continues to rage. More than four billion dollars in U.S. military aid, accompanied by military training for the Colombian armed forces at the School of the Americas, is fueling the war.

The approach of the SOA/WHINSEC of “solving” social problems with military violence has left an indelible mark on the country: millions of people have had to flee their homes and thousands have been killed over the past years. The Colombian military has the worst human rights record in the Americas. The military continues a ruthless counterinsurgency campaign that has killed thousands of Colombians and displaced millions (this year, Colombia surpassed Sudan as the country with the most internally displaced people).

Liz Deligio and Charity Ryerson, as SOA Watch members of the Ethics Commission, traveled to Colombia from July 23 - August 1 to visit with impacted communities. The Ethics Commission is a gathering of members from the Colombian and international communities who have joined in solidarity with impacted communities in Colombia. The Commission gathers twice a year to hear testimony from communities about the systematic human rights violations they experience as well as what they envision for reparation. The Commission traveled to the Chocó region in the north of Colombia.

In northern Antioquia, the African palm oil business has forcibly displaced thousands of mestizo, afro-descendiente, and indigenous families from their own lands. In concert with the police, military, paramilitaries, and local government offices, the palm oil companies have murdered and displaced community members and falsely claimed legal right to the territory.

More:
http://www.soaw.org/presente/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=76&Itemid=74

[gbscar]

2. CODHES, not SOAWatch, is the NGO that actually tracks displacement figures on the ground in Colombia

Displacement is certainly related to land theft as one of its main causes but it is also a distinct process. Land theft concerns who actually controls or owns the land that has been taken away from displaced parties, either directly (the aggressors themselves take the land) or indirectly (the land is bought or received from the aggressor), peacefully (without any armed pressure) or violently (using threats or murders).

For example, drug traffickers have made many massive land purchases, essentially flooding the market at one point, at least since the 1980s. Not all of those are going to be a part of "displacement" but they are, in fact, a key part of what is classified as land theft. Drug lords often displaced people too, no doubt, but they also used heaps of filthy cash to acquire land at the same time.

Not to mentiont that we're not even looking at any concrete estimates or figures for who, in fact, owns or controls said land today, since ownership has necessarily changed over the years even among the "new" owners. Land theft is, as a result, something that is also associated to other forms of land concentration and not just violent displacement.

The argument that this is all because paramilitaries and soldiers displace people to give land to foreign corporations can be considered as partially accurate, to some extent (there are, obviously, such things going on...and drug lords have also participated in several investment projects by multinationals), but also incomplete and simplistic.

I believe it's worth taking a step back and proceed to drag other factors into the equation.

------

The SOA Watch article (from Fall 2007) that was previously posted says the Colombian Armed Forces are responsible for displacing millions, which implies that they are the only or primary party responsible for all of this forced displacement and, by extension, for land theft.

The resulting discrepancy appears to be logical. If that is the case, then the BBC and the Colombian Agriculture Minister are surely wrong, exaggerating or lying through their teeth when they mention that other parties are also responsible for displacement and land theft, because clearly SOA Watch is supposed to know better...right?

But there's a small problem here. CODHES, not SOA Watch, is the NGO that directly tracks displacement in Colombia.

Let's put it this way: if you trust that the total number of displaced persons in Colombia is over FIVE milllion, then you, like the United Nations and others, are knowingly or unknowingly using the numbers CODHES is tracking in their database. These figures are different and usually higher than those tracked by the Colombian government, both because of methodology and for any applicable political considerations, since CODHES is a human rights NGO and the government generally doesn't like those.

For example, see http://www.internal-displacement.org/idmc/website/countries.nsf/(httpEnvelopes)/A7E1B7BD7528B329C12575E500525165?OpenDocument">here:

"Internal displacement currently affects 8 to 11.6% of the national population. According to CODHES, in 2010, 280,000 people were newly displaced, adding to previous displacement to create a total number of 5,200,000.

Government figures for 2010 differ significantly from CODHES's. The total, cumulative figure also varies significantly, as the governments registers a total of 3,600,000 to December 2010. 2008, 2009 and 2010 government figures are influenced by the decision of the Consejo de Estado that invalidated Decree 2569 of 2000, and by the Constitutional Court’s Auto 011."

CODHES is tracking, independently and as the central part of the Follow-up Commission for Public Policies on Displacement, which is a non-governmental entity established in 2005 and run from the offices of CODHES, both the total number of people who have been displaced and who actually displaced them.

The Commission's reports and documents can even be found on the CODHES site. See (in Spanish):
http://www.codhes.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=39&Itemid=52

Let's start looking at some numbers then. In 2000, this is what CODHES reported in terms of responsibility for displacement:

"During the year 2000, the forced displacement of civilians continued to be used as a military control strategy in the armed conflict. Some 48% of the cases of internal displacement were carried out by paramilitary groups, while 29% were the work of armed dissidents. Displacement caused by unknown parties rose to 16% of the total, which would seem to indicate that the protagonists in the conflict do not always want to claim responsibility for the acts of violence that cause and attend displacements."

Source (online host, in English):
http://www.cidh.org/annualrep/2000eng/chap.4a.htm#_ftnref42

Source (taken from the footnote, in Spanish):
CODHES Informa, Boletín de la Consultoría para los Derechos Humanos y el Desplazamiento, July 2000.

In 2008, CODHES and the Follow-Up Commission presented a report which is referenced in http://www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004BE3B1/(httpInfoFiles)/5BCA28006BFAA8ADC12575E8005CBF23/$file/Colombia+-+July+2009.pdf">this link.

"According to Acción Social, the government agency for IDP policy, FARC and the guerilla National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional, or ELN) have been responsible for 23 per cent of internal displacement, and the paramilitary groups no more than 12 per cent. The national verification survey by the Civil Society Follow-Up Commission found, in contrast, that guerrilla groups were responsible for 33 per cent of displacement, and paramilitary groups for 37 per cent.

The sharp difference in the percentage of cases of displacement attributed to paramilitaries may be explained by the fact that people feel more comfortable declaring the cause of their displacement to a civil society group than to the authorities, especially for those who might fear retaliation from paramilitaries (Comision de Seguimiento a la Politica de Publica sobre el Desplazamiento Forzado, 4 June 2008)."

As the previous paragraph shows, there is large difference between the Commission's figures and the Colombian government's (via Acción Social), particularly those concerning the participation of paramilitaries in displacement.

Like the above quote concludes, it is extremely plausible that displaced persons will be less likely to tell representatives of the Colombian state that they were really displaced by the brutal paracos and, at the same time, more likely to admit this only before non-governmental parties, which includes representatives of the Commission in question, particularly since CODHES runs it and directly interacts with displaced persons in order to build their database.

But there's another interesting fact here. Apparently CODHES and the Follow-Up Commission recognize that the guerrillas -described as "armed dissidents" in one of the earlier quotes- are responsible for a significant percentage of displacement: 29% in 2000 and 33% in 2008.

If you've noticed though, the English-language sources above are not necessarily including all percentages and don't completely add up. Information is missing, which you can find (in Spanish) by looking at the actual reports on the CODHES website and also on the Commission's page. In particular, the data for recent years is available as large .PDF format files http://www.codhes.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=98">here (2008) or http://www.codhes.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=168">here (2010), among other documents.

But you might be surprised at what you find, since neither CODHES nor the Commision have statistical data indicating that the Colombian security forces are the primary parties responsible for displacement. As it turns out, the percetange is so low they're practically absent. See for yourselves by checking out the links.

---

Now, it is possible -no, rather likely- that even these figures are underestimating the indirect or direct involvement of Colombian soldiers or police forces in forced displacement and those percentages could be, hypothetically speaking, hidden within all of those displaced persons who answered "n/a" or otherwise blamed their plight on unknown parties.

Perhaps even a good number of displaced persons aren't willing to tell everything they know to an NGO, regardless of its being an NGO that has been independently tracking displacement and making their plight recognizable worldwide by collecting and publishing data over the years.

And, of course, Colombian security forces often support paramilitary forces, which makes them morally and (one hopes) legally responsible for their horrors regardless of who was actually carrying out the brutal act. To a greater or lesser degree, I can accept all of that.

However, even taking the above into consideration, this doesn't eliminate the fact there are more parties responsible for displacement, including the guerrillas among them. Not even the most negative interpretation of the information CODHES and the Commission have collected over the years would support ignoring their role or considering it insignificant. Last time I checked, ~30% of displacement isn't a forgettable figure.

But how much of that reflects land theft? That's a very good question. The guerrillas aren't, at least not in most people's imaginations, land owners. Some of the more greedy commanders might be "administrating" certain properties through front men, as a complicated form of taxation at best if not purely out of corruption at worst, but this isn't the main part of their policy. I'd say it's safe to conclude they may be a lot more responsible for displacement per se and a lot less for land theft (unintended consequences aside, but I wonder who ever considers those?).

Nevertheless...the SOA Watch article, which was posted as something of a response to the original BBC report, doesn't primarily deal with land theft as a national issue but rather focuses on displacement in a specific region. Notably, it also absolutely fails to provide any supporting statistics for either process. Still, the article certainly has the virtue of speaking up for those who have been victimized by the palm oil business, that is undeniable, and I do believe it does reflects what SOA Watch saw during their visit to Colombia back in the day. That is one part of a real and cruel reality.

I do have to wonder, however...if the BBC article is "bad" because it does leave certain significant details out, then is SOA Watch "good" because it also leaves other important facts behind? Or are CODHES and the Commission quietly serving "fascist" interests as opposed to following the example of SOA Watch's statistics-less stance? I'll leave that conclusion to whoever is remotely interested in thinking about these issues with an open mind.