The Indigenous World 2024: Colombia
Colombia is home to some 115 Indigenous Peoples of diverse origins and linguistic and cultural traditions. They live spread throughout the whole country: on the Caribbean and Pacific coasts, in the Amazon, the Orinoco savannahs and the Andean region. In the latest 2018 national census, the total reported Indigenous population stood at 1.9 million people,[i] of which 64% inhabit 846 legalized collective territories. The rest of the population is located in urban centres or scattered across rural areas.
In addition to Indigenous Peoples, the Colombian Constitution and laws also recognize Afro-descendant communities, the Raizal island communities, the Palenqueros of the Caribbean and the Roma people as collective subjects of rights.
Unpaid debts to Indigenous territories
In Colombia, Indigenous reserves are the constitutional form through which the state recognizes and formalizes the collective ownership of these peoples’ ancestral territories. This recognition was achieved through a combination of the peoples’ struggles, the transposition of international instruments such as ILO Convention 169, and developments in the Colombian Constitutional Court’s case law. This progress reaffirms that the mere ancestral occupation of Indigenous collective territories is equivalent to a property title granted by the state. It further establishes that these areas are not limited to lands that are effectively inhabited, exploited and titled but that they also extend to the traditional spaces in which their worldviews, economic systems, vital resources and unique systems of organization take place.
Due to the particular significance that land has for Indigenous Peoples, the protection of their territory is not limited to lands that are titled but is a legal concept that extends to the entire area essential to ensure the full and free exercise of their cultural, religious and economic activities, in accordance with the ways they have been undertaken ancestrally. The State has an obligation to protect Indigenous communities from disturbances they may suffer when exercising their activities on what they consider their ancestral territory (...). (Constitutional Court, 2014).[ii]
However, while there has been clear progress in terms of formal recognition of the integral and collective rights of Indigenous Peoples in Colombia, including their right to territory, it is also true that this right has been undermined by delays in the process of titling and expanding the reserves and also because many of the territories already legally constituted are being exposed to de facto acts of dispossession and eviction of their populations. This situation is especially prevalent in regions that have been subjected to continued violence due to the presence of armed actors, drug traffickers, settlers, large landowners, or extractive companies.
During current President Gustavo Petro’s Preliminary Consultation on the Development Plan 2022-2026,[iii] some of the serious problems affecting the country's Indigenous Peoples and ethnic communities were highlighted, together with the disproportionate impact that Colombia's armed conflict and structural violence have had on their societies, territories and resources. The severe damage caused to their natural ecosystems as a result of predatory exploitation models was also recognized.
Over the last decade, more than 15% of national deforestation has occurred in ethnic territories. In the case of Indigenous reserves, there has been an increase in deforestation largely in the Amazon biome, a region that includes departments such as Caquetá, Putumayo, Amazonas, Guaviare, Guainía and Vaupés, and some sectors of the departments of Meta, Vichada, Cauca and Nariño (...). The main causes of deforestation in these territories are related to the illegal extraction of minerals, which contaminates water sources with heavy metals such as mercury and cyanide, and causes environmental impacts of great magnitude in areas rich in biodiversity; the illegal extraction of timber results in colonization and expansion of the agricultural frontier and illicit crop corridors (UN-REDD, 2017), leading to socio-environmental land-use conflicts (National Development Plan, 2022-2026).
In line with this assessment, the plan proposes a change in the relationship between state and Indigenous Peoples and establishes a commitment to work with ethnic communities to overcome delays in land titling and restore their violated individual and collective rights. Within this framework, special mention is given to ethnic territories in the border areas, all of this under the principle of the autonomy and self-determination of these peoples.
With scarcely a year passed since this current government took office, it is premature to make any assessment or determine the scope of the good intentions that have been stated as a central plank of rural land management policies. It is, however, possible to affirm that progress has been made in this direction, including an effective agreement within the National Indigenous Territories Commission, a body comprising representatives of the Indigenous Peoples and the national government, to address issues related to the guarantee and effective enjoyment of territorial rights.
Current and future figures
According to information from Colombia's National Land Agency,[iv] as of August 2023 there were 846 legally constituted Indigenous reserves covering a total of 35,608,579.2 hectares and representing approximately 31% of the national territory. The largest reserves are located in the Amazon region and the south of Orinoquia, where more than 52 different Indigenous Peoples live. In the other regions much smaller reserves predominate, some of them formed of discontinuous plots of land even though they are continuous spaces historically occupied by the same community.
The territorial situation of the Andean peoples in departments such as Cauca, Nariño, Huila, and Tolima, among others, is very poor due to the high population and low productivity conditions of the areas that have been legalized for them. In other regions, such as the Caribbean, the Orinoco foothills and the highlands, Indigenous Peoples face problems attributable in particular to extractive and agroindustrial megaprojects. In any case, a large proportion of Colombia's ethnic territories are exposed to illegal trafficking and drug trafficking corridors that control and disable important areas of occupation and use by ethnic communities.
Under these circumstances, the demands for Indigenous territorial guarantees are focused not only on recognizing their collective property titles but also on the real possibility of their occupation and enjoyment, which will only be possible with effective measures of expansion, regularization, clarification, protection and de-escalation of the violence affecting them. In fact, the National Land Agency reported that, as of the end of 2023, 1,559 applications were in process related to the formalization, consolidation and legal security of the collective ancestral territories of various peoples throughout the country.
The current government’s goal is to deliver 39.58% of the hectares available in the National Land Fund for Integral Rural Reform in order to establish, expand and regularize the reserves of the Indigenous Peoples, as well as to coordinate these processes for guaranteeing territorial rights with the actions being carried out by the Land Restitution Unit and the Unit for the Attention to Victims. This latter institution has already been implementing the Collective Reparation Route in 429 Indigenous communities that were affected by the armed conflict.[v]
At the November 2023 meeting of the National Indigenous Territories Commission,[vi] a series of specific commitments were renewed and signed for 2024, such as the allocation of USD 33.2 million (approx. EUR 30.8 million) to Indigenous Peoples; the consolidation of the Land Fund; the harmonization of information systems; the filing of 80 land restitution claims before restitution judges, and the completion of the formation and regularization processes for a series of reserves that are in process, among other things.
Total Peace
A surprising event took place in Colombia on 2 October 2016, one that went against the course of the peace agreements reached between the national government, headed by then President Juan Manuel Santos, and the FARC-EP guerrillas. On that day, a referendum took place aimed at ratifying the Peace Agreement that had been signed by the two parties in Havana, Cuba, and which also included a special Ethnic Chapter on the participation of Indigenous Peoples and ethnic communities.[vii] Despite the prevailing optimism among locals and outsiders alike, 50.2% of voters voted “no” to ratifying the agreement.
Although the “Yes” campaign was defeated by only 50,000 votes (0.4% of the total), as the days went by, the reasons for this astonishing result were revealed: a high abstention rate (62.5%),[viii] the greater weight of voters in urban areas less affected by the conflict, the excessive confidence of the agreement’s supporters, and the misinformation and propaganda campaign waged by sectors of the extreme right wing. The victory of the “no” vote not only resulted in a new phase of the negotiations but also in the introduction of a series of significant amendments to the initial content. This has been enough for opponents to create a narrative, however, and they continue to use the same discourse to discredit the process to this day.
An analysis of textual statistics shows that the “No” campaign based its message around issues of fear, war and communism. The words most used by these leaders were thus: “war”, “terrorism”, “impunity”, “crimes, “massacres”, “drug trafficking”, “atrocities”, “rape”, “chavismo”, “Venezuela” and “crimes against humanity”. In addition to the issue of war, there was also a discourse of fear around the possibility of the FARC coming to power and Colombia becoming “a new Venezuela.” (Nueva Sociedad, 2017).[ix]
From the start, and later with the arrival of Iván Duque’s government, the implementation of the Final Peace Agreement with the FARC-EP suffered severe setbacks and sabotage. The first and perhaps most serious of these came from the state itself, headed by the then Attorney General, Néstor Humberto Martínez Neira. This latter became spokesperson for the extreme right-wing forces opposed to the agreement: he not only conceived several legislative amendments to the final text but also designed a judicial framework prejudicial to the main FARC-EP negotiators[x] that ended up causing the desertion of hundreds of guerrillas from the peace process. In this context, the start of implementation of the Final Agreement with the FARC-EP was strewn with mutual distrust and the armed retaking of many territories, which continued to be the scene of confrontation between guerrillas that were not part of the peace process, such as the National Liberation Army (ELN), the new dissident groups, organized armed groups linked to drug trafficking cartels, and the security forces.
The four years of Iván Duque's government thus passed in an atmosphere of tension and a lack of commitment to peacebuilding. During this period, the number of murders of social leaders and signatories of the Peace Agreement, massacres, forced displacements, cocaine exports and other indicators of violence increased once more, particularly in Indigenous and Afro-descendant ethnic territories.
With the election of President Gustavo Petro towards the end of 2022, a commitment to effectively implement the Final Peace Agreement signed with the FARC-EP in 2016 has resurfaced and Total Peace has been established as a state policy. This concept encompasses not only a de-escalation of violence and armed groups but also human security and life in all its forms:
It is a matter of generating territorial transformations, overcoming the deficit of economic, social, cultural and environmental rights, and putting an end to armed violence, both that of socio-political origin and that marked by profit, accumulation and the securing of wealth. The communities are calling for an end to the violence, which has taken various different forms. The most recent has to do with unfulfilled peace processes, such as the 2004 demobilization of the paramilitary United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), the 2016 Teatro Colón Peace Agreement, or the Medellín and Cali urban pacts. (National Development Plano 2022-2026).
Based on these principles, talks were resumed with the National Liberation Army (ELN), the Central General Staff (EMC/former FARC dissidents), and with groups associated with organized crime such as the Gulf Clan, one of the armed groups that has had the greatest growth and territorial expansion in recent years, and which maintains control of drug trafficking routes, trafficking of inputs for coca processing, illegal mining, arms trafficking and extensive extortion networks. Discussions are being conducted independently with each group, and progress is still discrete. Nevertheless, animosity and obstacles to Total Peace are the order of the day from the same sectors that opposed the Peace Agreement with the FARC-EP, and they sustain this with the same arguments, the same propaganda and even with the support of the same institutional pillars (Prosecutor's Office, Attorney General's Office).
Total Peace in Indigenous territories
It is a fact that despite dialogue and some partial agreements with the Central General Staff and the ELN for a ceasefire, an end to the kidnapping, and relief from the pressure on communities, the conflict continues to claim victims in the ethnic territories. Although there was a slight decline in relation to 2020 and 2021, the 2023 figures were still worrying in terms of murders of Indigenous people, especially in the departments of Cauca, Nariño and Putumayo. Without clarifying specifically, these can generally be attributed to the illegal armed groups that have not ceased to operate in these regions.
Once again, most of the victims are in regions where powerful interests converge over land, resources and illegal economies, and where they are also suffering serious situations of confinement and forced displacement. This was documented by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR):
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) counted, between January and June 2023, the mass displacement of 26,915 individuals—mostly linked to armed clashes—and the individual displacement of 34,212 people—usually linked to selective homicides, threats, and forced recruitment attempts. The ICRC further recorded 22,755 individual cases of confinement in the first half of the year.
The Pacific region holds more than 90% of all forced displacement victims and 84% of all confined individuals in Colombia, with forced displacement being particularly serious in the department of Nariño and confinement being particularly serious in the department of Chocó. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) noted that, in 2023, 45% of all displacement victims in Colombia were Afro-descendant and 32% were indigenous, while Afro-descendant persons made up 37% of all confinement victims and indigenous persons amounted to 25%. (OAS, 2023)[xi]
The response of the Indigenous Peoples and communities to this still worrying scenario has gone beyond complaint. Various community and institutional scenarios have expressed their support for the current government’s Total Peace policy, on the understanding that the only way to address the structural causes of violence in their regions will be through a complex and comprehensive strategy that adequately addresses the multiple factors at play in the regions. They have also been outlining their own spaces for participating in the dialogue with the ELN and the Central General Staff, thus reiterating their commitment to the peace policy.
The authorities of the seven organizations with seats at the Permanent Roundtable for Consultation met over two days with the intention of contributing to and strengthening the processes of Total Peace and the negotiations that the national government is currently working on and through which the Indigenous Peoples, with their territorial scope, naturally have a great interest in reducing the violence in the territories (...). This space enabled both the national government and the ELN to recognize the authorities of the Indigenous Peoples, their differences and specific characteristics in the peacebuilding processes in each of their territories. All participants emphasized the importance of maintaining the autonomy of Indigenous Peoples through their own governments and that they be taken into account in the governance and organizational structure in order to establish their own methodology for contributing to the participatory design (Permanent Roundtable for Consultation with Indigenous Peoples, 2023).[xii]
Diana Alexandra Mendoza is a Colombian anthropologist with a Master's in Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law, and a specialist in Cultural Management. She is an independent researcher associated with IWGIA. She has extensive experience in individual and collective rights, environment and culture.
This article is part of the 38th edition of The Indigenous World, a yearly overview produced by IWGIA that serves to document and report on the developments Indigenous Peoples have experienced. The photo above is of an Indigenous man harvesting quinoa in Sunimarka, Peru. This photo was taken by Pablo Lasansky, and is the cover of The Indigenous World 2024 where this article is featured. Find The Indigenous World 2024 in full here
Notes and references
[i] The official data from the National Department of Statistics (DANE) on the Indigenous population, from the 2018 census, is currently subject to verification due to an under-registration that was denounced by Indigenous organizations and communities.
[ii] Constitutional Court, Decision T-849 of 2014.
[iii] Congress of Colombia. Plan Nacional de Desarrollo 2022-2026. Colombia: potencia mundial de la vida. 19 May 2023. https://colaboracion.dnp.gov.co/CDT/portalDNP/PND-2023/Ley_2294_del_19_de_mayo_de_2023.pdf
[iv] The National Land Agency is the entity in charge of implementing national policies on the social organization of rural property and, in particular, “Executing the plan of attention to ethnic communities, through programmes of collective titling, constitution, expansion, reorganization and restructuring of Indigenous reserves, acquisition, expropriation of land and improvements”.
[v] Victims Unit. Boletín Datos para la Paz. 2023. https://datospaz.unidadvictimas.gov.co/archivos/datosPaz/Boletin_Datos_para_la_Paz_Noviembre_2023.pdf
[vi] National Indigenous Territories Commission. ¿Qué se acordó en la última sesión mixta de la Comisión Nacional de Territorios Indígenas? November 2023/ Available at: https://www.cntindigena.org/que-se-acordo-en-la-ultima-sesion-mixta-de-la-comision-nacional-de-territorios-indigenas/
[vii] Acuerdo Final de Paz con la FARC-EP. 6.2. Capítulo Étnico. https://bapp.com.co/el-acuerdo-de-paz/
[viii] González Poso, Camilo. El Resultado del Plebiscito en Cifras y Mapas. 2016. Available at: http://www.indepaz.org.co/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/el-resultado-del-Plebiscito-en-cifras.pdf
[ix] “La ‘posverdad’ en el plebiscito por la paz en Colombia”. Nueva Sociedad. 2017. https://nuso.org/articulo/la-posverdad-en-el-plebiscito-por-la-paz-en-colombia/
[x] Santiago Romero, Enrique. La JEP: instrumento de paz, justicia y verdad. Cambios unilaterales y arbitrarios, enemigos y perspectivas. 2017. https://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/se/20191108024211/El_acuerdo_de_paz_en_Colombia.pdf
[xi] OAS. Colombia: IACHR Concerned About Violence in Colombia's Pacific Region and About the Impact It Has on Indigenous Peoples and on Afro-Descendant and Peasant Communities. 2023. https://www.oas.org/en/iachr/jsForm/?File=/en/iachr/media_center/preleases/2023/208.asp
[xii] Permanent Roundtable for Consultation with Indigenous Peoples. 2023. Las autoridades siguen buscando la paz de Colombia. Available at: https://www.mpcindigena.org/autoridades-indigenas-buscando-paz-colombia/
Tags: Land rights, Business and Human Rights , Human rights, Indigenous Peoples Human Rights Defenders, Conservation
