Victims Unit’s director, Paula Gaviria Betancur, highlighted the agreement on the reparation of victims reached in the Dialogue Table in Havana, in an Op-Ed published Monday in the Spanish newspaper El País.

Paula Gaviria Betancur, Victims Unit’s director, said in the Spanish newspaper El País that the agreement reached to repair the victims is ‘one more reason for hope.’ In an Op-Ed published on Monday, Gaviria stated that ‘the Victims Law (2011) has been crucial to reach the agreement on the fifth point of the dialogues, which was announced in December.’

She also said that victims ‘have become protagonists of an historic account that had pushed them into the background.’ Colombia started an administrative reparations program more than four years ago, so ‘today there are more than 582,000 victims who have been repaired,’ which allowed Colombia to become the only country to have achieved this number.

The Unit’s director talked about several processes the Unit is implementing, such as the strategy of reparation for survivors of sexual violence or the peasant farmers of Leticia (Córdoba department), who lead a collective reparation program. She also explained how the strategy ‘Entrelazando’ works to rebuild the social fabric of more than 100 communities.

After explaining the progresses made, she said that ‘not only the State will assume reparations, but those who directly or indirectly caused damages will have to repair the victims.’ This is the reason why the Comprehensive System for Truth, Justice, Reparation and Non-Repetition was created.

According to Gaviria, ‘restoring the life projects of many citizens touched by violence should push us to continue reparation’. The mere possibility of not having one more victim of the conflict should be enough for us to choose the path of peace, she concluded.

Check the whole text (in Spanish):  http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2016/01/25/colombia/1453730051_860541.html