The Lost Peace. Collective Land Titling, Natural Resources and Armed Conflict in the Colombian Pacific

Time: 11:00 - 12:00
Venue: Just Faalands Meeting Room, CMI (Jekteviksbakken 31)

Since the 1990s, the Colombian Pacific region has experienced a process of intensification of the internal armed conflict. Some studies have described this as an unintended consequence of the legal recognition by the state of black inhabitants of the region as ethnic groups with right to land, and with right to manage their own resources. This project explores the relationship between this change in the structure of land ownership and the dynamics of armed conflict in the region. At the same time, it asks to what extent those dynamics are related to the planting and exploitation of palm oil. The concept of extractive orders is deployed to compare the experiences of the departments of Chocó and Nariño, exploring the relationship between changes in regimes of land tenure, palm oil cultivation and armed conflict.

Paola García Reyes is Anthropologist with a Master degree in  Political Studies from the National University of Colombia. 

She is currently an active member of the study group on "Democracy, Nation, and War" of the Institute on Political Studies and International Relations of the same University, and resident researcher at the group of social anthropology in the Colombian Institute on Anthropology and History. 

She is enrolled in the PhD Programme in Social Sciences with emphasis in Political Sciences of the Latin American Faculty in Social Sciences in Mexico. 

Her main areas of study are civil wars and internal armed conflicts, and the political dimensions of the recognition of ethnic diversity in her country. 

Her PhD explores on the relationship between changes in regimens of land tenure (from public lands to collective lands), palm oil cultivation and armed conflict in the Colombian Pacific region.