BACKItem 1 contains the agreement regarding the Comprehensive Rural Reform (RRI according to its Spanish initials), which seeks to ensure the wellbeing of rural residents by deeply transforming their reality. This transformation is focused on bringing development to rural areas, eradicating rural poverty and ensuring the full enjoyment of citizen’s rights in rural areas.
The reform has four pillars:
- A great quantitative and qualitative leap in land use and access. This means distributing land to peasants without land or whose land cannot provide them with dignified living conditions. In addition, it provides comprehensive access, which includes irrigation, credit, technical assistance, the ability to form associations, and opportunities for commercialization and formalization.
The distribution will take place through a large Land Fund, which will be supplied with illegally acquired lands—provided through the rigorous application of procedures like civil forfeiture—and by the reclamation of uncultivated plots that were improperly appropriated or occupied.
A large portion of the land in Colombia is not being used productively. Thus, it is necessary to bring land use in line with its intended purpose, develop modernization programs, and extend and update the land registry for the entire nation, the latter to collect more funds through the property tax.
Additionally, the aim is to advance an Environmental zoning plan that will align an interest in preservation with an interest in providing economic alternatives to rural communities that are established in, or contiguous with, protected areas. The Peasant Reserve Zones will be a tool for accomplishing this goal.
- The establishment of Special Development Programs with a Regional Perspective. These programs will develop in the regions that are most in need and will coordinate State interventions. They ensure that the appropriate institutions work hand-in-hand with communities, so that the regions that were most affected can be rebuilt with real action plans. These programs also seek to facilitate reconciliation.
- The development of national plans for the entire rural sphere. These plans will radically reduce poverty, especially extreme poverty. The plans are oriented towards providing public infrastructure goods and services through investments in service roads, electrification and connectivity; promoting social development to narrow the gap in healthcare, education and housing between the countryside and the city; and, lastly, creating opportunities and incentives for family agriculture, which should contribute to dynamizing rural economies, integrating these regions into the nation, and improving the quality of life for rural residents.
- Nutritional and food security as the center of the entire effort to transform the countryside. This final pillar is intended to increase food production and provide better nutrition, for the most impoverished in particular. To guarantee access to sufficient foods with a high nutritional content, local and regional markets will be strengthened, there will be campaigns for families to improve food preparations, and there will be special programs against hunger.
***
The Comprehensive Rural Reform requires a big effort to adapt institutions and budgets, but it also requires all Colombians to participate and contribute to the peace building process. Participation will guarantee a greater inclusion of rural citizens in the nation’s political, economic and social life.
