The balance was presented by Lorena Mesa, the Unit for the Victims’ General Sub-director, during the “Anti-personnel Mines and Unexploded Munitions Victims Participation and Inclusion Strengthening” national dialogue, which is taking place in Bogota.
The Unit for the Victims is part of the conversation that aims to improve the Antipersonnel Mines Victims Integral Assistance Route in the country. This event is led by the Peace High Commissioner, with the European Union support and different national entities and international organizations’ participation, which assist Colombia in its work to guarantee the population affected by these war artifacts rights.
According to the Sub-director and, due to their disability condition and suffered effects, the Unit has focused on strategy implementation that allows mine victims accessibility. In this sense, it has been boosting its capacities and skills.
“We have been applying accessible psychosocial strategies with disability condition victims under the “peer counseling” technique. This is done to promote disability acceptance, self-determination, strengthening of interpersonal relationships and social change management and promotion within this population”, highlighted Mesa.
Likewise, she said these processes have allowed victims to achieve greater self-confidence and self-determination, as well as enhancing their communication skills and the way they create networks and work plans to carry out a better dialogue with Government entities.
As for participation, the Unit highlighted incidence of 33 disability condition victims’ representatives and 33 antipersonnel mine, unexploded ordnance and improvised explosive device victims’ representatives.
“The victims’ public policy seeks to protect, guarantee, and promote the effective victims’ participation, which is condensed in the Effective Victims’ Participation Protocol structured in a national, departmental, district and municipal system of victims’ representation through the Effective Participation Boards”, emphasized the entity’s Sub-director.
There are more than 11,700 antipersonnel mine victims in the Single Victims Registry. The Unit has been working for them with a differential approach, promoting inclusion and participation spaces, as well as carrying out psychosocial processes that allow quality of life improvements for this population.
To date, more than $12 billion COP in compensation and over $688 million COP in Humanitarian Aid have been delivered to these victims.
(End/SSS/COG/RAM
