The French government has decided to finance a portion of Colombia’s agrarian reform through donations, endorsing the Peace Total policy. During a recent bilateral meeting, President Gustavo Petro highlighted the commitment expressed by his counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, in Paris, France.
President Petro stated that France will contribute to the agrarian reform through donations as the primary form of cooperation with Colombia. In his own words, “France will contribute to the agrarian reform. That is the agreement. They (the French government) accept my proposal for financing the agrarian reform as the main cooperative effort with Colombia. These resources are essentially donations, not loans.”
The President explained the type of financial assistance that the French government will provide: “These are essentially donation resources; we are not talking about loans. The country is heavily indebted, and agrarian reform cannot be accomplished through international loans, but rather through a donor fund.”
Recent establishment of agrarian jurisdiction
With 16 votes in favor and none against, the Senate’s first commission approved, in the seventh out of eight debates, a constitutional reform that establishes legal mechanisms to address issues of land tenure and ownership in rural areas of Colombia.
Senator Alexander López of the Democratic Pole, a member of the Government’s bloc and the project’s proponent, acknowledged this progress. He stated, “We have achieved a national consensus involving the Government through the Ministry of Justice, the judicial branch through the Council of State and the Constitutional Court, and the Congress in a bipartisan agreement to create agrarian jurisdiction. This will contribute to the progress of formalizing land ownership in Colombia and resolving agrarian conflicts that have left millions of people landless.”
López argues that this constitutional reform will rectify a historical debt owed to peasants, Afro-Colombian communities, and indigenous peoples in rural areas of the country. Furthermore, he points out that currently, the ownership of 75% of the land in Colombia is uncertain. The Senator emphasizes the need for the new reform by stating, “The director of the National Land Agency in the government of Iván Duque informed us that with the existing legal tools, it would take us 256 years to resolve land conflicts. The jurisdiction is established to reduce that time.”
