Secondary occupants in the Colombian land restitution process

This article evaluates how Colombian law and policy for the restitution of lands to displaced persons deals with the issue of secondary occupants

Published on November 11, 2021

Aura Patricia Bolivar Jaime | lanid, Transitional Justice, Solutions, Law/Policy, Americas (inc Caribbean)

Colombia. Comunidad © Aura Patricia Bolivar Jaime

In 2011, a land restitution program was created in Colombia. In the implementation of this program, an issue has been secondary occupation of properties requested for restitution. Many of these secondary occupants live in conditions of poverty, vulnerability and some are victims of forced displacement. In order to make the right to restitution effective, the law stipulates that such secondary occupants should be evicted. This article aims to identify how this problem has been addressed by various actors, the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court of Justice, specialised restitution judges and magistrates and the Land Restitution Unit, in order to better understand the advances and limitations of the process.

Towards this end, the article is divided into three parts. The first examines jurisprudence of the Colombian Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court of Justice and specialised land restitution jurisdiction, in particular the Restitution Courts, in relation to secondary occupants. The second evaluates pertinent measures designed by the national government, focusing particularly on the Accords issued by the Board of Directors of the Land Restitution Unit, alongside a general assessment of measures ordered and implemented by the Land Restitution Unit. Finally, conclusions and reflections deriving from this analysis of the Colombian case are presented.

Aura Patricia Bolivar Jaime is a lawyer and a specialist in constitutional law with a master’s degree in Law from the National University of Colombia. She is currently a doctoral student at the Institute of Legal Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

This Working Paper was written by the author during her Summer Fellowship on Internal Displacement at the Internal Displacement Research Program of the Refugee Law Initiative. The grant was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, on behalf of the UKRI Global Challenge Research Fund, as part of the funded project “Interdisciplinary Network on Internal Displacement, Conflict and Protection” (AH/T005351/1).

Download RID Working Paper No. 4 (in Spanish)

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