The Unit for the Comprehensive Care and Reparation of Victims continues this month with the delivery of compensation in Antioquia municipalities to victims of armed conflict, as part of the total of 11.525 payments in response to the health emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This week, 112 people benefited from this restorative measure in Medellín, after receiving notification of bank drafts in compliance with the biosecurity measures ordered by the Government.
Cecilia Torres is one of them. Upon receiving her letter of dignity in which the Victims Unit recognizes that their rights were violated by violence, she emotionally related that, after suffering forced displacement and settling in Medellín, now “I am going to put the roof on my house and so have a decent place to live where no more leaks fall. I’m leaving happy and grateful”.
Together with her family, she fled the municipality of Angostura in 1999 due to the guerrilla takings and the armed confrontations affected the population. She recalled that “for all that violence we had to run away and lose everything because an armed group wanted to take two of my children”.
The director of the Victims Unit in Antioquia, Wilson Córdoba Mena, reported that the 11.525 financial compensation delivered in Antioquia for more than 100.960 million pesos “corresponds to one of the measures of comprehensive reparation, which aims to improve the quality of life of these people, and that is why they are oriented to invest in housing, education, health, savings or productive projects”.
In addition, he explained that the majority “are people over 74 years of age, with disabilities or with some catastrophic illness, who benefit from the priority route of reparation in recognition of the victimizing acts such as homicides and forced disappearance of family members, kidnappings, forced displacement and personal injuries”.
These administrative indemnities add to more than 1.128.000 already delivered by the Victims Unit in the last nine years in Colombia (until May 31, 2020), in compliance with the Victims Law. Of these, 264.381 in Antioquia.
In addition, during the current emergency, the Unit has delivered in this region 46.562 humanitarian aid orders worth 29.190 million pesos to attend to victims of forced displacement with deficiencies in the food and accommodation components.
During the current pandemic situation, since April the entity has benefited the population affected by the armed conflict with more than 62.000 financial compensation and humanitarian attention to more than 301.000 families across the country.
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