President Iván Duque, highlighted the progress made in the area of compensation by the Victims’ Unit throughout the country and pointed out that this response vindicates and generates equity for those affected by conflict.
“This is an exercise in vindication but at the same time of equity and we are very pleased that after so long all of you receive that compensation, all our love and gratitude,” said President Ivan Duque, after delivering compensation to three victims , during the 33 Building a Country Workshop, held in Inírida-Guainía.
In this department, the inhabitants of Colombian Orinoquía were allowed to talk directly with President Iván Duque and his government team. The Victims Unit was present to accompany the victims and listen to their needs in terms of comprehensive attention and reparation.
In a previous exercise, sector tables identified the needs that would be exposed in the Workshop, through a representative of each theme. Thus, for the subject of victims and reconciliation, the spokesperson chosen by the participants was Hugo Chequemarca Córdoba.
“We need more support with the issue of housing so that in future programs assign quotas to victims. We also require plans for returns and relocations, as well as more agility in the delivery processes of humanitarian aid”, said Chequemarca in his speech at the Workshop.
For his part, the National Director of the Victims Unit, Ramón Rodríguez, in the delivery of administrative compensation to three elderly survivors of armed conflict, said: “We have managed to deliver a significant resource in compensation so far this year which is the result of saving and adjusting the budget, plus the search for resources through international cooperation”.
The Unit executed in 2016 a co-financing project with the Government that benefited 140 families, with a total investment of $ 1,500 million. Likewise, 357 survivors of armed conflict were compensated for a total value that exceeds $ 1,920 million since 2011.
“In the path of collective reparation, 5 ethnic communities will initiate the different phases that will seek to compensate for the community effects that these ancestral peoples experienced due to the war”, Rodríguez recalled.
He also said that “as restitution measures contemplated in the Comprehensive Collective Reparation Plan (PIRC) to the national sector of councilors and deputies, the Victims’ Unit handed over an office to the Departmental Assembly of Guainía for a total value that exceeded the $ 27 million”.
According to the Unified Victims Registry, this department has 6,516 individuals as subject of attention and reparation by the Colombian State.
(FIN EA / AMA / MPA)
