In this article, I invite you to take a rough look at the Land Restitution Unit in Colombia, in the period August 2022 to date.

^{Figure 1. Populations affected by forced displacement in Colombia. Own authorship. Photos taken from the Internet}

^{THE LAND RESTITUTION UNIT RESTITUTES, GIVES VOICE AND DIGNIFIES VICTIMS IN COLOMBIA.}

Photo 1. Director General of the URT and Director of the Directorate of Ethnic Affairs (back, right) August 2022 to date.

In the current context of the "Government of Change", Giovanny Yule is the general director of the Land Restitution Unit-URT, a professional in Social Sciences, a member of the Nasa indigenous people, with great roots in the organizational dynamics of indigenous peoples: Governor of the Indigenous Reservation of Caloto; Councilor of the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca-ACIN; Political Advisor of the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca-CRIC and impact on the dynamics of the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC).

Under his direction, Giovanny has configured the URT as a coherent structure with the multi-ethnic and multicultural character of the country, including a Council of Mayors and Elders, linking professionals from ethnic peoples, peasant professionals and urban and rural mestizo professionals.

Based on this configuration and based on a process of Strategic Institutional Planning, the URT proposes new paradigms and adjustments in the perspective of reversing recurrent and critical problems that hindered the functionality of the URT and so that the Restitution-Reparation processes are resolved in a comprehensive manner, in the perspective of the Consolidation of Total Peace and the Higher Institutional Purpose of Restitution of Territories to harmonize nature and the life of the peoples.

^{CRUCIAL SITUATIONS AND NEW PARADIGMS EN LA URT}

"Slowness, absence of institutional response and interests in the URT that delayed the times for the restitution and reparation of the victims. Only 25% of the requests were attended to and in most cases the restitution of the victims was denied." 

"Preventing and avoiding dispossession has been restricted by practices used by different legal and illegal actors to take over the land." 

Restitution Integral Restoration 

_{^{For the URT, forced dispossession and displacement entail the transgression of a variety of rights and not only the legal ownership of the property in its material dimension. This paradigm is consistent with what has been established by the Constitutional Court of Colombia, which establishes that forced dispossession and displacement affect not only land ownership but also territories and related rights, and that the right to territory is a fundamental right, not only for indigenous, Afro-descendant and peasant communities, but for the entire population in general.  since it is an essential part of the development of human beings and constitutes their vital scenario.}}

^{Differential, Ethnic and Gender Approaches in The URT}

The URT assumes that dispossession and forced displacement affect the territory and not only the land in its material dimension. The territory and the right to territory that does not prescribe, is an essential element of the social and individual existence and survival that ethnic peoples have historically built, culturally differentiated and with a collective symbolic dimension that underlies the human-nature bond that has been woven collectively since very remote times, and on which the guarantee of their historical existence is based.  social and cultural. 

In order to recognize the differential impact on ethnic and peasant peoples, the URT incorporates as a strategy to resolve the Restitution-Reparation processes from Territorial, Collective, Ethnic and Differential approaches in accordance with the Constitutional Court of Colombia, which establishes that when a community loses that possession for reasons beyond its control (as by definition happens in the case of forced displacement),  the State maintains the obligation to promote the recovery of its territory and its collective rights as a subject of differential rights and making effective the right of return.

In terms of the right to territory, the URT emphasizes Collective and Integral Restitution, implying from an inter-institutional strategy, the guarantee of other rights and freedoms that are related to it: the right to the use and enjoyment of natural goods and to govern collective territories according to their traditions, assuming that this right is also linked to other fundamental rights such as prior consultation (in ethnic peoples), rights to food, water, health, housing, education, the exercise of spirituality and political participation, among others.

Historically, women have not been seen as possessors of land, which is why, in the context of the armed conflict, the strategy of disappearing their partners arose among armed groups so that they would be forced to leave their territories, which leads to 52% of victims of dispossession and forced displacement being women. Faced with this panorama, the URT assumes the Rights of Women and the Gender approach, as fundamental to reduce barriers and facilitate women's effective access to the processes of Restitution-Integral Reparation.

For the URT, peasants are subjects of territorial rights and special protection, as established in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, and in the adjustment of Article 64 in 2023 of the Political Constitution of Colombia.  which recognizes the peasantry as a subject of Rights and Special Protection.

From August 2022 to December 2024, the following achievements are reported, among others:

• 75% of applications submitted by victims
• Restitution- Collective Reparation as an inter-institutional roadmap

^{Figure 2. Some achievements of the URT August 2022-December 2024. Own authorship. Photos taken from the Internet}