Sixty six-year-old Gloria is a community leader living in a village near Pasto, the capital city of Nariño department, in western Colombia along the border with Ecuador.
Gloria is a victim of Colombia’s decades-long armed conflict, and Nariño is a department where many illicit crops are grown, especially coca, which is used to produce cocaine.
Gloria is not originally from the area in Nariño where she now lives. Along with her family she was forced to flee her home during the conflict. Today, she sits on a local 'victims table' where issues facing victims of the armed conflict can be discussed and later raised with local and national authorities.
Speaking of her experience of living through the conflict, Gloria said: “I lived in a small town in Nariño, very far from Pasto, and the conflict was very intense there. When FARC was there it was very hard. There was a commander and when he liked women, he sent for them to be raped,” Gloria said.
Fearing her children would be forcibly recruited into by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel group, Gloria felt she had no other choice but to send them away.
“The commander took boys when they were 12 up to the mountains, so I decided when my sons were old enough, I’d send them to Pasto with my mum. I stayed behind working with my dad.”
Gloria later followed her children to Pasto. As an adult, however, one of her sons was killed during the conflict while serving as a police officer.
“I was feeling so bad, and it was then that one of my friends signed me up for the national land agency. They wrote to me and said I would benefit, so they brought me here and gave me the land.”
Five years prior to the signing of a historic peace agreement in 2016 between the Colombian state and FARC which brought large-scale conflict to an end, the government passed the Victims and Land Restitution Law. The law aims to give back millions of hectares of land that had been forcibly taken or misappropriated from their rightful owners during the war.
Land was often directly stolen by armed groups or the land deeds obtained from their rightful owners illegally, either through violence or by making false land claims, in order to acquire the land for their own use, including for the production of coca. In 2015, Gloria was again forced from her land by an armed group after receiving threats and a life-threatening assault.
“I am working for land restitution because I now need to leave the land I was assigned and live in a different municipality because an armed group threatened me and said they wanted to kill me unless I left my land,” said Gloria.
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At the beginning, they called me on my phone and said I had to leave. They named a woman who had been abducted and forcibly disappeared from the area 10 years ago and said that if I stayed, the same thing was going to happen to me.
“They put letters under my door and even put graffiti all over the walls saying they were going to kill me if I didn’t leave. I didn’t want to leave my home, so I stayed. Then the group came and attacked me with a machete. I was almost killed so that is why I left.”
A key challenge faced by victims is that the under the victims law, restitution claims are dependent on victims being able to provide information including exact land registration details. This is particularly difficult for people forced to flee their homes as many have lost their documentation in the process. Also, many women were not able to access their land titles after their husbands died or went missing during the conflict.
“People think that because I don’t have the property title that they can just take it,” Gloria said.
Even though Gloria no longer controls her land, she still risks her life to occasionally farm the crops on her land to earn money to survive.
“I only go back to my land once in a while. It is very dangerous for me to be there. I grow coffee crops there, that’s my livelihood. I keep going because I am very poor and all I have is what my land gives me.”
Gloria is working with the Land Restitution Unit, the state body responsible for the return of misappropriated land, and despite the struggle she’s faced, she hopes a resolution will soon be in sight.
“The Land Restitution Unit are going to pay for the land I’ve lost, and they will hopefully give me different land where I am now because I love it here.”
Christian Aid’s local partners Sisma Mujer and Colombia Diversa have used funding from the European Commissionto support victims like Gloria.
In Nariño, Sisma Mujer run workshops for women leaders, human rights defenders and victims of the conflict to develop campaigning skills as well as provide personal safety training. They also run emotional support sessions to help victims cope with the trauma they’ve experienced, as well as the stress of ongoing threats of violence.
Gloria said she has also begun a legal case against the group who has sent her threats and taken her land. At the workshop, Gloria learned how to properly record any threats she receives so that they can be admissible in court. Gloria said she intends to use the information she has learned to help others in her community get land restitution too.
A lot of people I know are very vulnerable because they don’t know a lot about their rights. Because I’ve learned a little more, I tell them to come to me and I can help them to resolve their issue. I know it’s very risky, but I like helping other people.
“Now I am helping my colleagues and friends to get the property rights to their own lands.”
This work is possible thanks to funding from the European Commission.
