The Victims Unit carried out the installation of the prior consultation with the Ethnic Collective Reparation Subject San José de Bacao, in company with the Ministry of the Interior.

With the presence of the Ministry of the Interior, the Victims Unit and authorities of the Epedara Siapidara indigenous people, belonging to San José de Bacao Collective Reparation Subject, a prior consultation was installed in the municipality of Olaya Herrera (Nariño), for the beginning of the process of characterization of damages of this community, which continues its path towards collective reparation.

According to Carlos René López, representative of the Interior Ministry, "the Ministry of the Interior serves as guarantor for the political dialogues and agreement between the Victims Unit and the collective subject". “We are installing the prior consultation in San José de Bacao reservation, for the process of comprehensive collective repair plans in which the Unit sets out its schedule and the proposals that will be developed in the different stages of the route; the idea is that this process can come to fruition”, he explained.

For his part, Albeiro Chirimia Pertiaga, community leader, assured that "for us the prior consultation means advancing in what we need to be repaired, because we want to develop many activities and we also want the institutions to do the consultation as it should be". “The reparation process is important because our ancestral knowledge is being lost due to displacement and due to the pandemic, it is difficult to meet and perform rituals; we need to recover our roots”, he added.

Finally, William Pinzón Fernández, territorial director of the Victims Unit in Nariño, said that “as an entity it is very important to reach the territory and advance in the process of collective reparation, in this case with an ethnic community affected by the conflict. armed, and this installation is the symbol that, despite the pandemic, as an entity we have not stopped, for the benefit of the victims of our department”.

The next step in this process will be the characterization of the damage, to analyze the effects suffered by this population in the context of the armed conflict, a diagnosis that will subsequently allow the formulation of the Comprehensive Plan for Collective Reparation for this subject.

(End/LNB/CMC/LMY)