The Victims and Land Restitution Law proposes compensation as a measure that can be applied when it is legally and materially impossible to restitute.
This is the case of an elderly couple who will not return to their abandoned properties in the village of Manzanares in the municipality of Acacías, because their land is located in an area at high risk of flooding. The ruling ordered the delivery of a house with similar characteristics to the one they left at the time of displacement.
The family bought two properties totaling 45 hectares in the 1980s. There they built their house out of wood, dedicated themselves to cattle raising and the production of food crops. They had a quiet life.
In 2003 their luck changed due to the constant combats led by the Farc EP guerrillas to achieve territorial control and ordered all the inhabitants of the village to leave the territory under penalty of being killed, causing a massive displacement of peasants towards Guayabetal. in Cundinamarca.
After their exile, the eldest son of this couple was murdered after being accused of collaborating with the guerrilla. Added to this was greater suffering, the disappearance of one of its members.
With the enactment of the Victims and Land Restitution Law, this family nucleus went to the URT, to process their process before the courts, getting the First Civil Court of the Specialized Land Restitution Circuit to declare them victims of forced abandonment. and order compensation as a reparation measure because the requested property is in a risk zone.
Thus, the elderly couple is the holder of the fundamental right to restitution, whose materialization will materialize with the delivery of another home, while the transfer of ownership of the abandoned properties will pass to the Cormacarena environmental corporation for their protection.
Source: Land Restitution Unit