BY THESE DAYS there is an advertising campaign which talks about the epidemic of excuses that we Colombians call on when we are in public thoroughfares. "There are behaviors that make us act irrationally," says the advertisement, and to avoid them "we must use our road intelligence."

When a child asks how long a horse lives, some old people in Antioquia still answer this: see millet, a chicken lives three years, a dog three chickens, a horse three dogs and a human three horses, count yourself. I thought of this explanation last weekend when celebrating the Bicentennial. And how long does a country lives?

Dejusticia presented an amicus brief regarding the scope and routes of access to the right of reparation, as well as the scope of Colombian legislation on forced displacement and reparation, among others.