“You are an example to follow in terms of registration and reparation to victims,” Ivón Argenta said to them, from El Salvador, to the representatives of Colombian government who were listening to her sitting in the room arranged in the chancellery to carry out the videoconference.
The communication between the two countries was carried out in accordance with the cooperation expressed in December 2018 by the director of Victims Unit, Ramón Rodríguez Andrade and the Ambassador of El Salvador in Colombia, Francisco Galindo Pérez, to strengthen the system of Victims registration and reparation of El Mozote massacre and nearby towns, happened in that Central American country in the middle of the civil war in 1981 and left around 1,200 victims.
The Colombian delegation in the videoconference was integrated by the director of international cooperation of Victims Unit, Nicolás Fernández de Soto, the director of the Registry of the same entity, Gladys Prada, and officials of the Presidential Cooperation Agency (APC) and of the chancellery.
Francisco Galindo Pérez the ambassador of that country in Colombia was present in Bogota, and from the Central American territory, through videoconference, government spokespersons and members of the Registration Board of El Mozote victims and populations surrounding areas, which are also part of the survivors of these successive massacres committed in 1981 in El Mozote and several nearby communities by members of the Salvadoran Armed Forces.
“You have advanced a lot in registering and repairing the victims and for us it is a great opportunity to learn from their experiences,” said Ivón Argenta. And Ambassador Francisco Galindo, reiterated what he had said last December: “We have a lot to learn from the Victims Unit in Colombia.”
The registry of victims of El Salvador has been formed in development of an international sentence that condemned the State for the facts and consists of 1,725 people among executed, survivors, displaced and family members, according to Salvadoran spokesmen in the videoconference.
Ivón Argenta admitted that this registry “is very small compared to Colombia’s, so it is important to know their experiences.” In Colombia, according to Gladys Prada, director of Victims Unit Registry, there are 8,801,000 people included in the Victims Registry (RUV). Of them they have already received administrative compensation around 900 thousand.
In a few days an agenda will be established between the two governments for this issue, which will include a visit by Salvadoran representatives to Colombia, probably in March of this year.
The Central American nation requests support in information security, strengthening the institutional framework and governance of these issues in the change of government, reconstruction of records destroyed during the war, among other issues.
Other countries have expressed to the director of Victims Unit, Ramón Rodríguez, interest in receiving technical support from the entity in the processes related to victims of armed conflict, including Mexico, Peru and Guatemala, with which the entity is positioned at an international level as a technical advisor on these issues.
