Colombia Mobile Victims Unit Impact Evaluation

Last registered on June 18, 2018

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Colombia Mobile Victims Unit Impact Evaluation

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0001708

Initial registration date

October 31, 2016

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

October 31, 2016, 4:07 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated

June 18, 2018, 3:37 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country

Colombia

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Juan Vargas

Affiliation

Universidad del Rosario

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Jorge Silva-Mendez

PI Affiliation

The World Bank

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Megan Rounseville

PI Affiliation

The World Bank

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

On going

Start date

2016-04-01

End date

2018-12-31

Keywords

Governance, Post-conflict

Additional Keywords

victims, justice, legal services, legal aid, transitional justice

JEL code(s)

C93, D63

Secondary IDs

CAF: 9320/16, U. Rosario: SAF 20110902

Abstract

The internal armed conflict in Colombia has lasted over 52 years and left over 8 million victims. In 2011, the Government signed a progressive and comprehensive Victims and Land Restitution Law (Law 1448) that ensures the right of access to truth, justice, reparation, and no repetition to all victims. This impact evaluation estimates the effects of a national government program that serves as a front door for victims to access justice services - the Mobile Victims Unit - which brings together three public entities with different responsibilities within the provision of services to victims. Moving around the country visiting marginalized communities, the unit’s staff provide a range of services including the provision of information on victims’ rights, legal aid to enable victims to file declarations of victimhood and appeals with the State, and the provision of updated and personalized information about where victims’ cases stand in the bureaucratic process of enrollment and implementation of a variety of public reparation, assistance, and attention services. This trial estimates the short-term effects of access to these services on two levels: the individual victim level and also at the community level, by surveying program participants and a random sample of community members. The effects will be estimated on reception of reparations, knowledge of rights, access to justice, integration into the community (economic and social), and perceptions of justice and the State.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Rounseville, Megan, Jorge Silva-Mendez and Juan Vargas. 2018. "Colombia Mobile Victims Unit Impact Evaluation." AEA RCT Registry. June 18. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.1708-3.0

Former Citation

Rounseville, Megan, Jorge Silva-Mendez and Juan Vargas. 2018. "Colombia Mobile Victims Unit Impact Evaluation." AEA RCT Registry. June 18. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/1708/history/30942

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

The Mobile Victims Unit (MVU) is a joint strategy by the Colombian Ministry of Justice, National Victims Unit, and the Public Defender’s Office. It has been implemented nationally since 2012, visiting approximately 55 municipalities with low service coverage and a high demand for victims services each year. The services offered by the MVU include education on victims’ rights, reception of declarations, consultations on the status of a declaration, consultations on reparations and services offered, and psychological orientation and legal aid.

Intervention Start Date

2016-04-14

Intervention End Date

2016-12-06

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

The individual-victims level of analysis seeks to test if the receipt of services from the MVU in a municipality leads to an increase in the following variables:
1) Victims’ knowledge of: i) the status of their own case, ii) the rights afforded to victims under Law 1448, and iii) how to access the services offered to victims;
2) Levels of material reparations and services received and access;
3) Wellbeing: i) economic, ii) employment, iii) quality of life, iv) experience of crime and violence, v) presence of depression, vi) empowerment and self-efficacy
4) Integration into society, gender norms, and intra household dynamics;
5) Victims’ self-assessed sense of truth, justice, and perception of security;
6) Perception of the state, armed groups, and the on-going peace process.
At the community level we will assess the same factors as listed above to capture spillover effects on community members.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

The experimental design will address the following research question: What is the impact of delivering legal services through a mobile unit in Colombia?

To answer this question, the evaluation uses a clustered randomized phase-in trial design and conducts a panel survey with a random sample of program participants and community members.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

The randomization was done using STATA. Randomization was conducted within matched pairs of municipalities. Pairs were formed using municipal level characteristics of historical violence, presence of armed groups, and municipal level demographic characteristics.

Specifically matching was conducted using strata based on three characteristics: 1) whether the MVU had visited the municipality in prior years, 2) if in the last semester of the previous year there were no armed groups present, and 3) if the municipality was part of a large governance program funded by USAID. Within each strata the following characteristics were used to match municipalities: 1) number of victims registered in the national Unique Victims Registry (RUV); 2) average annual homicide rate; 3) municipal population estimate; 4) percentage of the population poor; 5) percentage of the population that self-identified as indigenous; 6) percent of the population that self-identified as “Afro-Colombian”; and 7) percent of the population that lives outside the municipal center.

Randomization Unit

Municipality

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

57 municipalities

Sample size: planned number of observations

Control group: 750 community members, 2,000 individual program participants; Treatment group: 750 community members and 2,000 individual program participants.

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

30-27 clusters in Control; 27 clusters in Treatment

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

The sample size of 4,000 program participants has been calculated to meet the objective of being conservatively powered to answer our primary research question. Using existing data in Colombia we estimate that the study will be powered at 0.90 or higher with an alpha of .05 or lower to observe the following changes: a. Increase by 5 percentage points in the likeliness to have reported their experience of violence (from 24 percent to 29 percent) among program participants; b. Increase in 5 percentage points of having received benefits from the Colombian Government (from 30 percent to 35 percent) among program participants; c. Increase in perceived trust in the justice system by 10 percent (along a 4 point scale) from 3.56 average response to 3.91 average response; d. Increase in the perception of security by 10 percent (along a 4 point scale) from 2.49 average response to 2.74 average response.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB