In Colombiaaccess to the land and its legal property remain issues of high legal and social complexity. Although reforms have been implemented to Ranked historical inequalities, guaranteeing communities rights and promoting rural development, normative fragmentation, persistence of armed conflict and informality in tenure continue to generate tensions in the Colombian countryside.
According to Andrés Montoya, partner of Posse Herrera Ruiz“The legal framework on land ownership is mainly included in Law 160 of 1994, which has been renovated and revived several times”
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To this are added norms such as Law 200 of 1936, Law 1448 of 2011 on land restitution, Decree Law 1902 of 2018, and recently Law 2294 of 2023which introduced relevant adjustments from the National Development Plan. This whole frame is compiled in Decree 1071 of 2015, which includes agricultural regulations.
Land
In turn, Esteban García Jimeno, Senior Counsel in Holland & KnightIt emphasizes that, from the constitutional point of view, the legislative act 001 of 2023 amended article 64 to consecrate as principle the progressive access of the peasant population to the property of the land.
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In addition, legislative act 03 of the same year gave life to the Agrarian and rural jurisdictiona new instance specialized in resolving disputes related to property, possession and agricultural exploitation in rural areas, which is still in the process of regulation. There are also the provisions of the National Land Agency (ANT)that through decrees and resolutions, regulates agrarian administrative procedures.
Rural access
Although in practice they interrelate, the mechanisms of restitution, formalization and adjudication of land have different purposes within the Colombian agrarian legal framework. As García Jimeno explains, land restitution “It refers to the procedure established so that a person stripped of a property within the framework of the armed conflict can obtain their restitution”, A process that combines an administrative stage before the Land Restitution Unit (URT) and another judicial.
Along the same lines, Montoya remembers that it is about “a legal mechanism of transitional justice focused on the repair of victims of the armed conflict that have been displaced from their territory”
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The Government manages 600,000 hectares for the National Land Fund, with the goal of reaching 1 million before 2026.
For its part, formalization seeks to resolve the lack of property titles in rural areas. According to García Jimeno, this measure “intends to assign the property titles to those who have the quality of land owners, but they are not owners”, Allowing greater legal certainty and access to financial services.
Access to land by indigenous and Afro -descendant communities is also regulated by specific procedures. According to Garcia, so that the ANT performs a collective degree, it is necessary to verify “The existence of ethnic history between the territory and a community”, Through legal and socioeconomic studies.
Tatiana Alvira
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