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On Titling Collective Property, Participation, and Natural Resource 
Management: Implementing Indigenous and Afro-Colombian Demands 
 
A
Review of Bank Experience in Colombia 
 
Bettina Ng’weno 
 
September 2000 
(revised for Rural Week 2001) 
 
30337
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Author’s Note on Important Terminology: 
 
“Indigenous” 
The Indigenous Operational Directive of the World Bank has a flexible working concept 
of “Indigenous” which identities Indigenous people in terms of marginality, customary 
institutions, territoriality, cultural distinction, language and self-identification. Under this 
working concept, although they do not have a clearly distinct language, Afro-Colombians  
of the Pacific littoral and rural Afro-Colombians in general can be considered Indigenous.  
This is because they make up some of the poorest populations in Colombia, they possess 
distinct social and customary institutions and consider themselves a distinct cultural 
group. More importantly they have traditionally occupied and used ancestral lands.  
Considering Afro-Colombians as Indigenous opened up a space for their inclusion as part 
of the NRMP, the legal protections of their lands and their participation in the 
management and conservation of the environment.   
 
Nevertheless, in Colombia the term “Indigenous” is a specific legal and cultural category.  
In particular it signifies the descendents of the original inhabitants of Colombia, who still 
identify themselves as a community and who have kept their traditional institutions.  
Legally until the 1980s  they were specifically those communities recognized as distinct 
through their titles to resguardos (Indigenous Territories) originally granted by the 
Spanish Crown. The historic continuity of this legal status is important for the definition 
of a community as Indigenous.   
 
For purposes of convenience in this paper the term “Indigenous” is used to refer to the 
communities as defined in Colombia.  That is to say, a legal status, in spite of the huge 
variety of people who fall under the category. This is done because although both 
Indigenous and Black communities can be considered “Indigenous” their legal status 
differs under Colombian law.   
 
However, for purposes of Bank policy and future projects, the recognition of Afro-
Colombians as Indigenous with all its implications, is a novel step that addresses poverty 
and inequality at a fundamental level.  If Afro-Colombians had not been recognized 
under the rubric of Indigenous in this NRMP, the program would not have had the 
rational to address the community demands of the majority of the population affected by 
the project in a manner relevant to the actual situation on the ground, and possibly 
territorial conflicts would have increased with little avenues for resolution.   
 
Reserves vs. Resguardos 
The Colombian institution of the resguardo is similar to that of Native American 
Reservations in the USA, in that they delimit a territory within which there is a measure 
of self-government, autonomy and control in the hands of the Indigenous population and 
the resguardo has a particular and separate relationship with the central government.  
Resguardo could be translated as “reserve” or “reservation” in English, however, this 
would lead to a confusion with “reservas indígenas” or “Indigenous reserves” which 
delimit much more limited autonomy, control and self-government and have a much 
more dependent relationship to the state.  
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Table of Contents:
 
Author’s Note on Important Terminology 
 
 
 
2 
Executive 
Summary 
      4 
Introduction 
       7 
The 
People 
and 
Their 
Region 
     8 
 The 
Inhabitants      8 
 Community 
Organization 
    9 
 Territorial 
Organization 
    10 
The Natural Resources Management Program (NRMP) 
 
11 
 
Forest Action Plan for Colombia (PAFC) 
 
 
11 
 
World Bank Indigenous People’s Operational Directive 
12 
 
The 1992 Yanaconas Meetings 
Legal Transformations 
 
Afro-Colombians and the New Constitution 
 
Transitory Article 55 
 
Indigenous Colombians and the New Constitution 
 
Legislation Arising from the Constitution 
 
Law 70 of August 1993 
 
Law 160 the New Law of Agrarian Reform of 1994 
 
Environment Law 99 of 1993 
 
Citizen Participation Law 312 of 1994 
 
Influence of International Conventions: ILO and RAMSAR 
The Process of Titling Collective Territories and the Pacific Today 
Red de Solidaridad (RED) 
Regional Committees 
 
Community Participation and Institutional Performance 
 
INCORA and Indigenous Land Titling 
 
The Action Plan of March 1998 
 
 
Expulsion of Regional Directors of INCORA 
 
The Unique Experience of Titling Collective Territories for Black Communities 
 
ACIA 
 
Some Benefits of Collective Titling and Participation 
Violence and Collective Territories of Ethnic Groups 
 
Ethnic Conflict and Resolution 
 
Community Organization and Conflict Resolution 
What is a Collective Title? 
Inter-Ethnic Territories 
The Legal Status of Ethnic Administration: Cabildo vs. Consejo Comunitario 
The Legal Status of Collective Titles and Public- Use Goods 
Impact of the Land Titling and Regional Committee Components of NRMP 
Communicational Impact 
Organizational Impact 
Spatial Impact 
Temporal Impact 
Lessons Learned 
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Executive Summary 
 
Since 1994, the World Bank has been supporting the Colombian Ministry of 
Environment in the implementation of a Natural Resources Management Program 
(NRMP). It included three components of titling and demarcation of Indigenous 
resguardos, titling of Black community lands, and setting up of Regional Committees.   
The objectives are:1) stopping the process of degrading natural resources, 2) promoting 
and improve the sustainable management and use of natural resources, 3) strengthening 
the capacity of the environmental, institutional and community management.  
 
World Bank funds have been used to contract Afro-Colombian and Indigenous 
community organizations to inform rural peoples about these new laws, as well as to set 
the groundwork for the granting of collective titles. One of the
 
benefits of the NRMP was 
that due to this active community participation and awareness of the program there was a 
rapid feedback mechanism regarding compliance with goals.  
 
The NRMP went through three important transformations: 
1) the Yanaconas Meeting of 1992 where the World Bank presented the proposed 
program for review by community organizations and representatives prior to initiation of 
the loan. Due to community demand, this meeting led to the reorientation of the 
institutional strategy to include the preservation of cultural and ethnic identity, the 
recognition of community territorial rights, including collective titling for Black 
communities, and, participation in the planning, execution and follow up of the program 
as the bases for the sustainable development of the region. 
 
2) the Inter-Ethnic Regional Committees starting in 1997 were set up to revise tensions 
and possible inter-ethnic conflicts, and to develop knowledge of the territorial rights, the 
actions of the state and external violent factors. Significantly, as the exercise of titling 
produced an escalation in ethnic conflict over territory, the Inter-Ethnic Regional 
Committees transformed the Regional Committees from principally training, capacity 
building and information dissemination sites to highly effective sites of conflict 
resolution.  
 
3) set up to combat tensions between the community and the government, the Action Plan 
of 1998 linked the operational plans for all three components into a single integrated 
work program with specific goals including strategies of territorial definition, capacity 
building, strengthening of intercultural understandings and conflict resolution.  
 
An essential legal framework both existed and was created through the NRMP.  Most 
important of these transformations was the 1991 new Colombian Constitution, which 
recognizes ethnic groups and their rights, including the right to collective territory and 
mandates participation as an integral part of the functioning of the state, for the first time. 
The NRMP is able to work from, and with these legal transformations, to make real some 
of the rights guaranteed in the constitution and to push for compliance with others, while 
at the same time the political will of the constitution enabled the NRMP to develop and 
implement environmental and territorial policy. 
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The existence of special legislation in independent forms gave rights to Indigenous and 
Black communities over areas that they occupy, but does not resolve complex situations 
where one or other share territories and have managed to develop forms of shared 
understanding and administration. In effect the legislation blocks the creation of joint 
inter-ethnic territories in spite of the community demand.  
 
In the Pacific, which used to be on the margins of Colombian violence, today the 
phenomenon of violence causes a permanent state of anxiety causing large displacements 
of poor peasants to urban centers. The violence breaks up social networks and internal 
governing, disturbs economic life and traditional forms of work, and breaks up traditional 
ways of managing nature, using natural resources and defending ecosystems. 
Nevertheless, collective titles not only set up legal basis to claim back the territory in the 
future but specifically register the social, cultural and political existence of communities 
associated with the land and the moral obligation of the state to their members.  
 
The NRMP was innovative in terms of community participation, conflict resolution and 
creating a solid base for environment conservation, instrumental in the implementation of 
legal statutes, the realization of constitutional rights of ethnic groups, and the justification 
and defense of territory, and fundamental to the creation of strong bonds between local 
residents and state institutions.  A lot of the success was due to the coordinating efforts 
on the part of the PCU in the Ministry of Environment, which had to balance limiting and 
controlling spending with giving autonomy and agency to the institutions they worked 
with.  Structural institutional transformations, not just within the local community 
organizations but also within the executing and coordinating agencies, are the basis of 
sustainability in such a program. In order to make participation a reality it was necessary 
to strengthen communities and their organizations as well as implementing agencies. 
 
Titling gave a clear and solid ownership over territory and a legal base effective to 
protect it. In the context of armed conflict the winning of ownership over the land, 
through NRMP, has represented for many communities of the Pacific a real possibility 
for the defense of life and a degree of independence from the conflict. Titling has also 
acted as a base for bargaining and legitimacy. In spite of the insecurity and upheaval 
brought about by the violent situation, land titles lend a specific long-term stability and 
permanence to communities.   
 
The efforts to obtain titles and the titling itself have contributed to strengthen the internal 
forms of government and the community’s negotiating capacity. Yet, productive actions 
that complement the Land Titling components of the NRMP are necessary to ensure the 
future long-term wellbeing of the communities.  The legal status of the collective titles to 
Indigenous and Black communities affects how they operate as territories and how the 
councils can operate as governing bodies.  A clarifying of legal positioning of ethnic 
territories, and municipalities in regard to one another, of revenue and resource collection 
and distribution, and of the administrative support from local and central government for 
the functioning of the territories would be needed to address arising territorial conflicts 
between administrative units. 
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The long-term effect of titling has been conservation through appropriation. The 
participatory nature of the program increased the community’s security in their capacity 
to make claims and to manage resources helping to recuperate cultural uses of territory 
and traditional knowledge about biodiversity.  Due to community participation and 
awareness of the program there was a rapid feedback mechanism regarding compliance 
with goals. Environmental programs that want to secure citizen participation need to give 
special support to strengthening community organizations where they already exist, and 
to push for their formation where they are lacking. 
 
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Introduction 
 
Since 1994, the World Bank has been supporting the Colombian Ministry of 
Environment in the implementation of a Natural Resources Management Program 
(NRMP).  The program is intended to contribute to the arresting of the degradation of 
natural resources along the Pacific coast and the several upland watersheds that drain into 
the coast.  Activities financed under the program include: (a) the development of a policy, 
information, and institutional base for forest management, with a particular focus on the 
Chocó region; (b) the rehabilitation and protection of selected water catchment areas in 
the western highlands; (c) the improved management of national parks; and (d) the 
strengthening of environmental and forestry education, training and research and program 
management.  
 
As part of the Policy and Strategy Development aspect of the NRMP, three components 
deal with the titling and demarcation of Indigenous reserves (resguardos), the titling of 
Black community lands, and the setting up of a series Regional Committees, to ensure the 
active participation of Indigenous and Black communities and their organizations in the 
land titling, environmental monitoring and natural resources management activities 
financed under the program. These components are considered essential to the future 
conservation, management and sustainable development of the forestry and other natural 
resources of the Pacific Coast.  
 
In particular the Bank has worked closely with the Project Coordinating Unit (PCU) in 
the Ministry of Environment (MOE), the Colombian Agrarian Reform Institute 
(INCORA), the Red de Solidaridad Social (RED), and the Indigenous and Black 
Community Affairs Offices of the Ministry of the Interior, as well as consulted with 
representatives of Indigenous and Black organizations to ensure the successful 
implementation of these components.  
 
The NRMP loan 3692-CO for US$ 39 million
 
with a maturity of 17 years including 4 
years grace period, draws to a close at the end of the year 2000. By June 2000, the 
program had achieved 72% of its Land Titling goals, benefiting 19,860 families (over 
100,000 people). The project spent US$ 3.25 million of the US$ 4.09 million allotted to 
these three components leaving a remainder of US$ 0.81 to terminate. The NRMP is 
responsible for 17% of land collectively titled to Indigenous people in the Pacific coast 
and 100% of land collectively titled to black Communities in Colombia in general.  
 
Beyond what is indicated by the number of Collective Titles achieved during the 
program, the NRMP has been innovative in terms of community participation, conflict 
resolution and creating a solid base for environment conservation, instrumental in the 
implementation of legal statutes, the realization of constitutional rights of ethnic groups, 
and the justification and defense of territory, and fundamental to the creation of strong 
bonds between local residents and state institutions.  
 
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This paper is an outline of the chronology of Bank involvement in the Indigenous and 
Black Land Titling and the Regional Committee components of the NRMP, the 
participation of different actors, the change in the framework of the three components and 
the lessons that can be learned for similar programs in other parts of the country, and the 
region, as well as for Bank projects in other regions. 
 
The People and Their Region 
 
The Pacific is a region of cultural complexity and diversity, administratively including 
the whole of the department of Chocó, and the western portions of the departments of 
Antioquia, Risaralda, Valle de Cauca, Cauca and Nariño. The Pacific basin is 
characterized by the presence of Black communities in the lowlands, river valleys and 
coasts and the presence of Indigenous communities in the higher elevations of the coast 
ranges and the cordillera. Indigenous and Black communities have thus organized their 
societies along the principle of verticality developing interconnected practices and 
technologies adapted to the use and management of a diverse ecology including the rain 
forests, seasonally inundated lowlands and the highlands. Today these groups have a 
special constitutional recognition and legislation that protects their rights after years of 
struggle for territorial legalization.  
 
The bio-geographic region of the Chocó extends 1,300 km from Panama to Ecuador and 
covers an area of approximately 100,000 square kilometers making up 8% of the 
Colombian national territory.  This area, which at its widest extends no more than 250km, 
has enormously diverse habitats ranging from the coastal basins to the Andean 
mountains. It contains rivers that run into the Pacific and into the Caribbean sea. It 
includes lowland coastal plains often containing mangrove swamps, the flatter river 
basins of the Atrato and San Juan rivers with altitudes of about 200 meters above sea 
level, the coast ranges which reach 2000 meters above sea level and finally the region of 
the western Cordillera of the Andes that rises to 4200 meter above sea level.  Because of 
this great heterogeneity of altitude and longitude the Pacific region contain numerous 
ecosystems within its predominantly tropical rain forests.  
 
The region is one of the most humid and rainy in the world with a rainfall average 
between 5,000 and 12,000 mm/year. Covered with tropical forests (77%) over some 9.1 
million hectares, that have been managed and maintained by the Indigenous and Afro-
Colombian populations, the region is privileged with an abundancy, variety, and 
variability of forms of animal and plant life.  
 
The Inhabitants 
 
The 83 municipalities that make up the bio-geographic region of the Chocó have a 
population of 2.3 million people that represent a little more than 6% of the total 
population of Colombia, 90% of whom are Afro-Colombian and 4% Indigenous. The 
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Pacific region has 1.3 million people who are rural and whom make up 12 % of the total 
rural population (1993 Colombian census).   
 
The inhabitants of the Pacific region are considered some of the poorest in the nation. 
The social indicators of the Pacific are particularly staggering: an infant mortality rate of 
over 100 per 1000 live births; 82% of the population do not have sufficient basic 
necessities as compared with the national average of 32%; the illiteracy rate is 39%; and 
the per capita annual income is less than US$ 500.    
 
The present economy is centered around an extractive system of natural resources, 
including timber, palms, gold, silver and river and sea products. In the southern part of 
the region and in the Andes agribusiness such as African palm cultivation, aquaculture, 
cattle ranching and sugar cane developed.  Nevertheless, the main production is on a 
subsistence level produced through traditional practices.  
 
The Indigenous communities of the northern Pacific region 
along the Atrato and San Jaun rivers  include the Embera, 
Wounaan, Katio, Chami, Tule and Zenu of the Choco and 
Antioquia.  They live with Afro-Colombians as close 
neighbors, in some areas sharing territories and in other 
forming distinct communities.  The Afro-Colombian 
communities are descended from enslaved populations from 
central west Africa principally the Guinea, Congo and Angola 
coasts, that were brought to exploit the mines of the Pacific 
from the first decade of the 17
th
 century and principally 
through the 18
th
 century.  These communities have occupied 
the territories as laborers, as peasant producers during 
enslavement, and as freemen (libres) and rebelling 
communities termed “palenques” since they first arrived.  
Further to the south in Nariño live the Awa who also live in 
parts of Ecuador. They too live upland from the riperian 
dwelling Afro-Colombian communities that share their 
forested territories along the Guapi river and near the 
centers of Tumaco and Barbacoas.  
 
Community Organization 
Community organization in the region is varied, some areas have old well established 
community groups and others are only just beginning to organize as part of the process of 
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titling. Problems and conflict related to the Land Tilting process are mainly found in 
areas were community organization is weakest, such as in Cauca where neither the 
Indigenous nor the Black population have a strong history of community organization. 
 
The two best examples of community organization in the Pacific are OREWA (the 
Regional Organization of the Embera and Waunana) and ACIA (the Integral Peasant 
Association of the Middle Atrato) both of whom represent a number of different 
communities of the Middle Atrato in the C
hocó, have existed for over 15 years and were 
involved in struggles over territorial definition and legalization long before the NRMP. 
At the same time they were instrumental in the implementation of the NRMP in terms of 
training, capacity building, dissemination of information, conflict resolution and 
institutional vigilance.  
 
Started in 1979, OREWA, originally a student organization in Quibdó with missionary 
direction, was probably the first expression of popular organizing in the Pacific with 
ethnic characteristics.  It brought forth fundamental themes of land, cultural respect as an 
identity base, autonomous self-government and the capacity to define and orient their 
own development options for the Embera and the Waunana Indigenous peoples.   
 
Born in 1986 and comprised of 3,500 members, ACIA is the first and best organized 
Afro-Colombian community based organization to come up with an integrated solution to 
the problem of the legalization of land. They were instrumental in structuring the demand 
for collective rather than individual titles. It came into being in opposition to two land 
and timber concessions in the Middle Atrato and was formed through small neighborhood 
associations working to attain basic necessities called “grupos de base” within the 
communities of the Atrato assisted by a group of missionaries from the Dioceses of 
Quibdó. In 1990 at the Meeting in Defense of Our Traditional Territory of the Pacific, 
ACIA claimed their territorial rights as: a minority ethnic group, as part of the patrimony 
they have gotten historically and though labor, and as a responsibility of state duty.  They 
demanded that these rights be fulfilled through the Collective Titling of the space in 
which they live.  
 
Territorial Organization 
 
If both Indigenous and Afro-Colombians are considered to have ancestral rights to land, 
then 95% of the inhabitants of the Chocó Region are entitled to land based on historic 
occupation. At the start of the NRMP most of the land in the Chocó Region was a public 
forest reserve under direct state administration.   
 
A
clarification of the land ownership situation was essential for the design of resource 
management and conservation policies, in order to assess the convergence of interests of 
the parties affected and involved, the distribution of economic benefits and costs, the 
degree to which market-based incentives can be used successfully and the justification, if 
needed, of compensatory measure for external costs and benefits.  Taking into account 
existing individually titled land, areas occupied by Indigenous groups for which reserves 
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were not yet legally established, and proposals for additional protected areas, an 
estimated 4 million hectares or 44% of the Chocó region was without clear land 
ownership at the beginning of the NRMP and available for the collective titling to Black 
communities. 
 
Territorial organization of the Pacific region was historically structured around the 
extraction of mineral and forest resources.  National and international companies at the 
margins of state control, generated forms of political and territorial control expressed in 
extreme forms of appropriation during the first half of the 20
th
 century through mining 
concessions, rubber market networks, banana and sugar cane plantations, and huge 
networks of inlets and creeks converted to routes for the trade in mangroves.  As a result 
of this, the countryside is made up of diverse land use situations depending on the how 
control is exercised over territory forming islands and pockets of population with limited 
communication with the exterior or within the Colombian nation. 
 
This colonial heritage of territorial organization exists parallel to types of organization 
traditionally developed by Indigenous communities and taken up by Black communities 
through time. Company territorial control is superimposed on forms of self-ownership of 
Indigenous peoples or Black family networks.  These forms came into conflict when the 
Pacific became the principal national center for timber production. 
 
Since the 1950s, there was an abrupt change in the social and economic life of traditional 
peoples with the expansion of the ports of Buenaventura and Tumaco on the Pacific and 
Turbo on the Caribbean and of roads and railroads that connected the Andean region with 
the coast and the extraction of timber in all parts of the Pacific. This economic investment 
and development was promoted by the macro policy of “apertura” in the 1980s, designed 
to open up the frontier of the Pacific to commercial interests and Colombia to the Pacific 
rim economy. A new chapter in regional history was opened with the multiplication of 
extractive actions, the Andean colonization looking to amplify the agricultural frontier, 
state projects of integration, the agro-industrial capitalism of plantations of bananas and 
cattle in the north and of African palm and shrimp aquaculture in the south.  The new 
order is characterized by the multiplicity of actors and the greater state presence in the 
regional functions.  Between the 1960s and 1990s the proposed projects included a naval 
base at Bahia de Malada, the conclusion of the Pan-american highway, the Popayan-
Lopez de Micay main road, the Pasto-Tumaco highway and the Santa Cecilia-Nuqui-
Bahia  Solano road, hydroelectric dams on the Bocobero and Micay rivers and large 
forest and mineral commercial concessions. 
 
The new model which has menaced the existence of Indigenous and Black populations 
since the 1970s mobilized the Indigenous communities to protect their territories and 
initiate the conformation of resguardos.  Since the 1980s this has been emulated by Afro-
Colombians who organized to fight for their territorial rights, which were concretized 
through constitutional recognition in 1991.  
 
Precursors of the NRMP 
 
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Since the 1960s  different Indigenous communities had been pressurizing the government 
to convert Indigenous reserves into resguardos, the majority of which were converted in 
the 1980s.  Although Afro-Colombians did not have legally recognized territorial rights 
as ethnic groups until the 1991 constitution, they too mobilized to have those rights 
recognized, as the concessions to Indigenous communities made their land tenure less 
secure.  In 1988 ACIA and the Regional Autonomous Corporation of the Chocó, 
CODECHOCO, signed accord 20 that awarded ACIA 800,000 hectares of land in an 
unofficial agreement which, although was not legally binding became a district model. 
 
The 1991 Political Constitution, which identifies Colombia as a multi-ethnic, pluri-
cultural nation, recognizes and outlines the framework for collective territorial rights for 
ethnic groups.  The new constitution created a different formula for running a 
government. It was instrumental in backing up the call for greater participation, 
consultation and recognition of territorial rights made by Indigenous and Black 
communities in the 1992 meetings in Yanaconas near Cali.  At this meeting titling was 
introduced to the Natural Resources Management Program that was in formation, as a 
priority strategy for strengthening sustainable development and cultural identity. 
 
Forest Action Plan For Colombia (PAFC
)
The new Natural Resources Management Program (NRMP) grew out of the Forest 
Action Plan for Colombia (PAFC).  Originally started in 1985 as the Tropical Action 
Plan, the PAFC had the objectives of: 1) maximizing the economic and social benefits of 
rural populations whose subsistence base was gained through use of forest resources, 2) 
elevating the  participation of the forestry sector in the national economy and 3) 
protecting and renovating forest ecosystems of high biological value. The PAFC was a 
joint government of Colombia, the Netherlands, and FAO project.  As a policy, the PAFC 
was more operational than strategic.  It had an over emphasis on vigilance and control 
over protected areas and did not take into account the problem of unclear land tenure 
situation, nor resolve the territorial demands of Indigenous and Afro-Colombians. 
 
World Bank Indigenous People’s Operational Directive 
 
The 1991 Operational Directive on Indigenous People of the World Bank was 
instrumental in the formulation and execution of the NRMP.  The objective of the 
directive is to ensure that Indigenous peoples do not suffer adverse effects during the 
development process and that they receive culturally compatible social and economic 
benefits. The strategy for addressing these issues is based on the informed participation of 
Indigenous peoples themselves, through out the consultation, incorporation, 
implementation and evaluation, giving full consideration of the options preferred by 
Indigenous people, in any project that affects Indigenous peoples and their rights to 
natural and economic resource.  
 
The directive identifies Indigenous people as among the poorest segments of a population 
having in varying degrees the following characteristics: 
World Bank Indigenous People’s Operational Directive 
 
The 1991 Operational Directive on Indigenous People of the World Bank was 
instrumental in the formulation and execution of the NRMP.  The objective of the 
directive is to ensure that Indigenous peoples do not suffer adverse effects during the 
development process and that they receive culturally compatible social and economic 
benefits. The strategy for addressing these issues is based on the informed participation 
of Indigenous peoples themselves, through out the consultation, incorporation, 
implementation and evaluation, giving full consideration of the options preferred by 
Indigenous people, in any project that affects Indigenous peoples and their rights to 
natural and economic resource.  
 
The directive identifies Indigenous people as among the poorest segments of a population 
having in varying degrees the following characteristics: 
1) a close attachment to ancestral territories and to the natural resources in these areas; 
2) self-identification and identification by others as members of a distinct cultural group.
3) an Indigenous language, often different from the national language 
4) presence of customary social and political institutions, and 
5) primarily subsistence-oriented production. 
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1) a close attachment to ancestral territories and to the natural resources in these areas; 
2) self-identification and identification by others as members of a distinct cultural group. 
3) an Indigenous language, often different from the national language 
4) presence of customary social and political institutions, and 
5) primarily subsistence-oriented production. 
 
The operational directive recognizes that in many cases, proper protection of the rights of 
Indigenous people will require the implementation of special project components that 
may lie outside the primary project’s objectives.  Some of these components include land 
tenure and a strategy for local participation. In order to incorporate components that 
recognize customary tenure and that ensure local participation the World Bank initiated a 
workshop meeting in 1992 in Cali, which was termed the Yanaconas meeting to review 
with the Black and Indigenous communities the proposed program components. 
 
The 1992 Yanaconas Meeting 
 
At this meeting the World Bank circulated the proposed plan for the NRMP to 62 
representatives of local communities, NGOs and government agencies with the objective 
of:  
1)  arranging a forum whereby the design could be debated and prosper from the 
informed participation of the affected communities in determination of the 
development objectives and project components,  
2)  incorporate the recommendations made during the workshop into the appraisal of the 
NRMP and  
3)  ensuring an integrated community based approach to management and rational use of 
renewable resources  and protected areas is forthcoming in all components.  
 
The government of Colombia accepted the idea because the new political mandate laid 
out in the 1991 constitution recognized and emphasized participation and the territorial 
rights of ethnic groups. Additionally, the old PAFC was not liked by anyone, not the 
government, nor the Bank, nor the people.  It was considered too 1970s in its emphasis 
on the amount of vigilance over the forests by the state. 
 
The workshop was attended by the institutions of national government, representatives of 
all the Regional Autonomous Corporations, 28 community based groups, NGOs, the 
High -Level Consultancy Commission, the highest organ of the accord and agreement of 
the Afro-Colombian community sector, and the institutions of the national government 
responsible for developing territorial programs for Afro-Colombian communities in the 
Pacific Coast. 
 
Although the original terms of reference for setting up the workshop did not mention 
Black community territory, (while mentioning other land tenure issues such as 
Indigenous resguardos), titling of Black community land was an essential factor 
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introduced through the process of participation. Representatives of Black and Indigenous 
organizations and communities helped reorient the institutional strategy to include the 
preservation of cultural and ethnic identity, the recognition and granting of community 
territorial rights and the collective use of natural resources by the local communities, as 
the bases for the sustainable development of the region. 
 
As a result of the workshop the National Planning Authority (DNP) agreed to guarantee 
the articulation of Transitory Article 55 that gives Afro-Colombians collective rights to 
territory which later led to the creation of Law 70 in 1993.  From this meeting a sub-
program named “Policy and Strategic Development” formed from the following 
components: forest policy, Black community land titling, constitution and demarcation of 
Indigenous resguardos, ecological zoning, environmental monitoring and Regional 
Committees.  The Regional Committees were to guarantee community participation in 
the planning, execution and follow up of the NRMP. 
 
The Natural Resources Management Program (NRMP) 
 
The main thrust of the Bank Assistance to Colombia from the mid 1980s has been to help 
establish a policy environment supportive of growth led by the private sector. The NRMP 
progressed to set the groundwork for investment through institutional strengthening with 
titling as a vital part. The loan proposal and processing lasted from August 1989 until 
October 1993.   
 
In 1993 the Bank Appraisal mission proposed that the NRMP requires complex policy 
actions which are relatively new to Colombia.  These included: 1) improve the 
institutional and regulatory framework in natural resource management; 2) develop a 
sound forest concessions and royalties system; 3) clarify land rights, in particular for the 
Afro-Colombian populations in the Chocó; 4) involve Indigenous and Afro-Colombian 
communities in project planning, implementation and environmental monitoring 5) 
support investments made by communities for the rehabilitation of vital watersheds on a 
matching grant basis and 6) improve the management of parks. 
 
The following expenditure and goals were set forth for the Titling and Regional 
Committees components of the NRMP: 
 
1)  Titling and Demarcation of Resguardos, at $0.5 million over 5 years (0.8% of 
total loan). Establish 40 resguardos and demarcate 123 existing resguardos 
benefiting a total of 68,000 people 
 
2)  Titling of Black Community Land, $ 2.0 million over 2 years (3% of total 
loan). Support initial actions to regularize and title land of Black communities 
in the Pacific Region under the terms of law 70.  This would include: 
coordination between state entities and Black communities; estimation of the 
level of demand for titling, identifying the regional priorities, critical areas 
Page  15
15
and potential problems; technical support and training; fieldwork with the 
communities informing them on the titling procedures and supporting their 
organization process; mapping and; supporting INCORA’s activities of land 
titling and registration.  
 
3)  Regional Committees, $1.3million (2% of total loan). To support the 
operation of mostly existing regional committees of delegates of local 
communities and community-based groups from the Indigenous and Afro-
Colombian populations in the Chocó Region. These committees would 
monitor the implementation of the NRMP, identify problems, coordinate land 
titling activities, build consensus and support proposed actions that would lead 
to mitigation or correction of perceived or actual environmental damages. 
 
Indigenous Resguardos Constituted as Part of the NRMP 
 
Resguardo 
   Department 
 Area 
(Ha) 
 
Families
Abejero    Chocó 
  230 
 6 
Abibe-Chigorodó 
  Antioquia 
 10,992 
 129 
Abeibe-Mutata   Antioquia 
 32,482 
 89 
Andabú    Antioquia 
 16,661 
 62 
Caimán 
Nuevo   Antioquia 
 210 
 141 
Chaquenodá 
   Antioquia 
 8,492 
 12 
Choromandó 
Alto 
y 
Medio 
 Antioquia 
 3,035 
 12 
Copé 
del 
Rio 
Ingará 
  Chocó 
  122 
 34 
El 
Sande 
   Nariño 
  8,825 
 173 
Gran 
Rosario 
   Nariño 
  15,560 
 154 
Guarandó 
Carrizal 
  Choco 
  72 
 12 
Isla 
del 
Mono 
 
   Cauca 
  1,560 
 12 
La 
Loma 
de 
Sitabará 
 
  Risaralda 
 269 
 66 
La 
lomita 
de 
Curundó 
  Choco 
  1,017 
 14 
La 
Palma 
   Antioquia 
 104 
 32 
La 
Puria    choco 
  5,237 
 63 
Las 
Ploayas 
   Antioquia 
 176 
 32 
Mojoré-Amburá 
  Antioquia 
 6,950 
 141 
Miasa 
de 
Partadó 
  Choco 
  2,289 
 15 
Mungaradó 
   choco 
  563 
 15 
Murrí-Pantanos   Antioquia 
 30,288 
 76 
Nusidó 
    Antioquia 
 258 
 33 
Paina 
    Choco 
  2,834 
 10 
Peñas 
del 
Olvido 
  Choco 
  231 
 62 
Pichicora-Chiué-Punto Alegre 
 Choco  
 
23,383  
71 
Piedra 
Sellada-Quebrada 
Tronquería 
Nariño 
  2,281 
 18 
Indigenous Resguardos Constituted as Part of the NRMP 
 
Resguardo 
   Department 
 Area 
(Ha) 
 
Families
Abejero    Chocó 
  230 
 6 
Abibe-Chigorodó 
  Antioquia 
 10,992 
 129 
Abeibe-Mutata   Antioquia 
 32,482 
 89 
Andabú    Antioquia 
 16,661 
 62 
Caimán 
Nuevo   Antioquia 
 210 
 141 
Chaquenodá 
   Antioquia 
 8,492 
 12 
Choromandó 
Alto 
y 
Medio 
 Antioquia 
 3,035 
 12 
Copé 
del 
Rio 
Ingará 
  Chocó 
  122 
 34 
El 
Sande 
   Nariño 
  8,825 
 173 
Gran 
Rosario 
   Nariño 
  15,560 
 154 
Guarandó 
Carrizal 
  Choco 
  72 
 12 
Isla 
del 
Mono 
 
   Cauca 
  1,560 
 12 
La 
Loma 
de 
Sitabará 
 
  Risaralda 
 269 
 66 
La 
lomita 
de 
Curundó 
  Choco 
  1,017 
 14 
La 
Palma 
   Antioquia 
 104 
 32 
La 
Puria    choco 
  5,237 
 63 
Las 
Ploayas 
   Antioquia 
 176 
 32 
Mojoré-Amburá 
  Antioquia 
 6,950 
 141 
Miasa 
de 
Partadó 
  Choco 
  2,289 
 15 
Mungaradó 
   choco 
  563 
 15 
Murrí-Pantanos   Antioquia 
 30,288 
 76 
Nusidó
Antioquia 
 258 
 33 
Paina 
    Choco 
  2,834 
 10 
Peñas 
del 
Olvido 
  Choco 
  231 
 62 
Pichicora-Chiué-Punto Alegre 
 Choco  
 
23,383  
71 
Piedra 
Sellada-Quebrada 
Tronquería 
Nariño 
  2,281 
 18 
Piguambi-palangala 
  Nariño 
  500 
 48 
Pipalta-Palbiyaguapi 
  Nariño 
  2,256 
 17 
Puerto 
Antioquia 
  Choco 
  280 
 8 
Puerto 
Libia-Tripicay 
  Choco 
  2,119 
 27 
Pulgande-Campo 
Alegre 
 Nariño 
  1,034 
 20 
Río 
Bebará 
   Choco 
  27,119 
 37 
S
b
l
t
Choco
610
26
Page  16
16
Piguambi-palangala  
 
Nariño 
  500 
 48 
Pipalta-Palbiyaguapi 
  Nariño 
  2,256 
 17 
Puerto 
Antioquia 
  Choco 
  280 
 8 
Puerto 
Libia-Tripicay 
  Choco 
  2,119 
 27 
Pulgande-Campo 
Alegre 
 Nariño 
  1,034 
 20 
Río 
Bebará 
   Choco 
  27,119 
 37 
Sabaleta    Choco 
  610 
 26 
San 
Agustín-la 
Floresta  Nariño 
  53 
 6 
San José Amiá de Pató 
 
choco   
 
820 
 
11 
Sanquinaguita 
   Antioquia 
 1,029 
 5 
Santa 
María- 
el 
Charcón 
 Antioquia 
 130 
 18 
Sever 
    Antioquia 
 9,977 
 54 
Tortugaña-Telembí 
  Nariño 
  24,918 
 197 
 
Total 
       2444,966 
1,958 
 
 
Collective Territories for Black Communities Constituted as Part of NRMP 
 
Collective Territory   
Department 
 
Area (Ha) 
Families
ACAPA   Nariño 
  94,388 
 1,453 
ACIA 
   Choco 
  525,664 6,275 
ACIA 
   Antioquia 
 169,581 1,629 
Agricultores 
del 
Patia 
 Nariño 
  31,475 
 202 
Alto 
Guapi 
  Cauca 
  103,742 437 
Apartadó 
Buenavista 
 choco 
  19,153 
 29 
Bajo 
Potedo 
  Valle 
  1,473 
 32 
Bocasde Atrato/leoncito 
Antioquia 
 
34,366  
49 
Bocas 
de 
Taparal 
 Choco 
  9,494 
 45 
Campo 
Hermoso 
 Valle 
  1,138 
 73 
Chicao 
   choco 
  18,026 
 58 
Clavelino 
  choco 
  3,709 
 27 
Dos 
Bocas 
  choco 
  8,734 
 16 
El 
Progreso 
 
  Nariño 
  29,969 
 314 
El Progreso del compo 
Nariño  
 
9,175   
152 
Guadualito 
  Valle 
  1,159 
 60 
La 
Madre 
  Choco 
  8,231 
 30 
La 
Nueva 
  Choco 
  12,738 
 41 
Los 
Mangos 
  Antioquia 
 384 
 33 
Manatíes 
  Antioquia 
 4,397 
 28 
Manos Amigas del Patía 
Nariño  
 
66,562  
395 
Mayorquin-Papayal 
 Valle 
  19,060 
 267 
Río 
Cacarica 
  choco 
  103,024 710 
Río 
Cajambre 
  Valle 
  75,710 
 1,479 
Río 
Napí 
  Cauca 
  47,007 
 436 
Collective Territories for Black Communities Constituted as Part of NRMP 
 
Collective Territory   
Department 
 
Area (Ha) 
Families
ACAPA   Nariño 
  94,388 
 1,453 
ACIA 
   Choco 
  525,664 6,275 
ACIA 
   Antioquia 
 169,581 1,629 
Agricultores 
del 
Patia 
 Nariño 
  31,475 
 202 
Alto 
Guapi 
  Cauca 
  103,742 437 
Apartadó 
Buenavista 
 choco 
  19,153 
 29 
Bajo 
Potedo 
  Valle 
  1,473 
 32 
Bocasde Atrato/leoncito 
Antioquia 
 
34,366  
49 
Bocas 
de 
Taparal 
 Choco 
  9,494 
 45 
Campo 
Hermoso 
 Valle 
  1,138 
 73 
Chicao 
   choco 
  18,026 
 58 
Clavelino 
  choco 
  3,709 
 27 
Dos 
Bocas 
  choco 
  8,734 
 16 
El 
Progreso 
 
  Nariño 
  29,969 
 314 
El Progreso del compo 
Nariño  
 
9,175   
152 
Guadualito 
  Valle 
  1,159 
 60 
La 
Madre 
  Choco 
  8,231 
 30 
La 
Nueva 
  Choco 
  12,738 
 41 
Los 
Mangos 
  Antioquia 
 384 
 33 
Manatíes 
  Antioquia 
 4,397 
 28 
Manos Amigas del Patía 
Nariño  
 
66,562  
395 
Mayorquin-Papayal 
 Valle 
  19,060 
 267 
Río 
Cacarica 
  choco 
  103,024 710 
Río 
Cajambre 
  Valle 
  75,710 
 1,479 
Río 
Napí 
  Cauca 
  47,007 
 436 
Río 
Pepe 
  Choco 
  8,191 
 294 
Río 
Raposa 
  Valle 
  20,526 
 583 
Río 
San 
Francisco 
 Cauca 
  26,232 
 138 
Río 
Yurumangí  Valle 
  54,776 
 529 
San Francisco de Cogucho 
Choco  
 
8,773   
83 
San 
Isidro 
  choco 
  12,851 
 206 
Taparal 
Valle
1,720
52
Page  17
17
Río 
Pepe 
  Choco 
  8,191 
 294 
Río 
Raposa 
  Valle 
  20,526 
 583 
Río 
San 
Francisco 
 Cauca 
  26,232 
 138 
Río 
Yurumangí  Valle 
  54,776 
 529 
San Francisco de Cogucho 
Choco  
 
8,773   
83 
San 
Isidro 
  choco 
  12,851 
 206 
Taparal 
   Valle 
  1,720 
 52 
Unicosta 
  Nariño 
  16,063 
 245 
Union 
Patía 
Viejo 
 Nariño 
  41,197 
 636 
Veredas 
Unidas  Nariño 
  13,170 
 229 
Villa 
Conto 
  Choco 
  29,026 
 330 
Villa María de Purriche 
choco   
 
24,411  
175 
 
Total 
     1,655,305 
 17,772 
 
The NRMP loan 3692-CO for US$ 39 million
 
with a maturity of 17 years including 4 
years grace period, draws to a close at the end of the year 2000. By June 2000, the 
program had achieved 72% of its Land Titling goals, benefiting 19,860 families (over 
100,000 people). The project spent US$ 3.25 million of the US$ 4.09 million allotted to 
these three components leaving a remainder of US$ 0.81 to terminate. The NRMP is 
responsible for 17% of land collectively titled to Indigenous people in the Pacific coast 
and 100% of land collectively titled to black Communities in Colombia in general.  
 
Results of the NRMP 
1
Titles   
 
 
Number    Communities 
Families 
Hectares
Collective 
Titles 
for 
 37 
 360 
 17,772 
 1,655,305 
Black Communities 
Indigenous 
Resguardos 
 
39 
 39 
 1,958 
 224,966 
constituted 
1
The evaluation in April, 2001 identified 58 collective titles for black communities for 497 communities, 
22,132 families, and 2,359,204 ha. Also the indigenous resguardos increased to 56 resguardos, 2,573 
families, and 2,683,429 ha. 
Page  18
18
Indigenous 
Resguardos 7  5  138 
 20,243 
amplified 
Total 
   83 
 404 
 19,860 
 1,920,514 
From Roldán and Sanchez External Evaluation June 2000 
Legal Transformations 
 
An essential legal framework both existed and was created through the NRMP.  Most 
important of these transformations was the 1991 new Colombian Constitution. Voted in 
by the National Constitutive Assembly the new Colombian constitution 
recognizes 
ethnicity as part of the discursive framework of the nation-state. It declares Colombia an 
"ethnically and culturally plural society" 
and mandates participation as an integral part of 
the functioning of the state. 
This new declaration is intimately associated with access, use 
and control over land, ascribing new rights in land as it ascribes new forms of recognition 
and belonging. 
 It thus lays out the framework for the Land Titling and Regional 
Committees components of the NRMP. 
 
More specifically the new constitution recognizes for the first time ethnic groups and 
their rights including the right to collective territory. It upholds the Indigenous political 
organization (cabildo) as a recognized body of landholders.  It also strengthens the 
autonomy of self-government and the protection of communal lands and unified and 
associative forms of property (articles 58, 63, 286, 287, 288, 330 and transitory article 
55).  It obliges a participatory form of government and provides for the protection of 
natural resources (articles 8, 80, 81, 82, 330-5).   
 
The following articles have special relevance to Indigenous and Afro-Colombian 
populations: 
 
·
The right of communities to conserve their integrity and the physical and cultural 
patrimony  (articles 2, 7, 10, 58, 63, 72, 79, 248 of living and to receive help in 
attaining this (articles 64, 330 and transitory 55) 
Page  19
19
·
Right of communities to participate in public affairs, those that concern them 
directly or indirectly and especially in deciding their own future (articles 1, 2, 40, 
41, 49, 286, 287, 329, 330, and transitory 55) 
·
Right of communities to the cooperation of the state in the protection of their life, 
culture and environment of their territories (articles 79, 330, and transitory 55). 
·
Right of communities to conserve and have respected their judicial and social 
institutions, traditions and customs. (Article 7, 8, 70, 246, 330,  and transitory 55) 
·
Right of communities to demand and obtain justice and satisfaction of their rights 
(articles 29, 86, 94, 229, 246, 282 etc). 
·
Right of communities to land and natural resources (articles 63, 286, 329, 330,  and 
transitory 55) 
·
Right of communities to health and social security (article 44, 48, 49, 50, 64, and 
366) 
·
Right of communities to an education adequate to their requirements and according 
to their culture (articles 67, 68, 69, and 70) 
·
Right of communities to know their rights and have them known and respected by 
the rest of national society. 
 
The new constitution opened up a space for ethnic groups that had not previously existed 
in Colombia.  At the same time it set out provisions for participation and environmental 
protection that were also novel. One of the strengths of the NRMP is that it was able to 
work from, and with these legal transformations, to make real some of the rights 
guaranteed in the constitution and to push for compliance with others, while at the same 
time the political will of the constitution enabled the NRMP to develop and implement 
environmental and territorial policy.   
 
Afro-Colombians and the New Constitution 
 
The 1991 Constitution opened up a space in which, for the first time, Afro-Colombians 
could organize and claim land as an ethnic group.  Since the abolition of slavery in 1851 
until 1991, Afro-Colombian populations did not have a single legal instrument from 
which to make territorial or self governing claims. There were no legislative or 
constitutional acts and laws relating to the rights of Afro-Colombian populations, neither 
to prevent or correct discriminatory treatment nor to compensate in some manner the 
enormous inequality left by slavery over 350 years. 
 
Indigenous peoples, being well organized and capitalizing on the solidarity created by the 
rejection of the celebrations marking the 500th anniversary of Columbus, were able to get 
two delegates elected to the National Constituent Assembly by national vote at the end of 
1990. However, Afro-Colombians and Insular Natives, had no delegates to represent 
them, and used lobbying to put forward concerns. Working with the Indigenous 
organization OREWA, Black Community organizations, such as ACIA,  formed a 
Working Table that lobbied for the dispersal and implementation of proposals, and 
mobilized and pressurized for the support of their demands which were presented by 
Indigenous constituents or the few sympathetic independents.  
Page  20
20
 
Only groups from Buenaventura influenced by the Bishop Gerardo Valencia Cano, tried 
to put up a representative to the National Constitutive Assembly.  The frustration of this 
process did not stop a young group of Afro-Colombians, el Movimiento Nacional 
Cimarrón, which later became a national movement, from presenting a proposal that 
through the constituents was put into the constitution.  It proposed that:  
 
1)“the Colombian nation is pluri-ethnic and pluri-cultural”,  
2) laws must “prohibit racism and all discrimination against Black and Indigenous 
communities”,  
3) they must “order the state to help zones inhabited by Black and Indigenous 
communities to accelerate their economic, social, cultural and political 
development,  
4) they must “ recognize the ancestral right to property and use that Black and 
Indigenous communities have acquired over the land they occupy”,  
5) and “determine a structure of national planning that promotes equality between 
the regions and eliminates the internal colonialism practices by more developed 
regions over the more marginal ones.”   
 
Transitory Article 55
 
Specific recognition of Black communities in the 1991 constitution comes in the form of 
T
ransitory Article 55 which states that; “the government will create a law that recognizes 
the right to collective property for Black communities that have come to be occupying 
vacant lands in the rural riparian zones of the rivers of the Pacific Basin, in accordance 
with their traditional practices of production.” 
It dictates that the inter-ministerial 
commission set up to review the rights of the Afro-Colombian populations, and the 
Congress should produce a law putting in motion transitory article 55 by mid 1993.  This 
law became law 70 in August 1993. 
 
Indigenous Colombians and the New Constitution 
 
Transitory Article 55
 
Specific recognition of Black communities in the 1991 constitution comes in the form 
of Transitory Article 55 which states that; “the government will create a law that 
recognizes the right to collective property for Black communities that have come to be 
occupying vacant lands in the rural riparian zones of the rivers of the Pacific Basin, in 
accordance with their traditional practices of production.” 
It dictates that the inter-
ministerial commission set up to review the rights of the Afro-Colombian populations, 
and the Congress should produce a law putting in motion transitory article 55 by mid 
1993.  This law became law 70 in August 1993. 
Page  21
21
Colombian law has always recognized Indigenous peoples as culturally and legally 
distinct societies within the greater national society, and as such holders of fundamental 
rights.  One of these special rights was the right to property in the form of a resguardo 
specifically defined in law 89 of 1890.  The resguardo as an institution granted the 
community complete rights of property over their lands, within a marked jurisdiction, 
free from civil ordinances.  
 
The 1890 law 89 grants Indigenous people entitlement to set up their own forms of 
internal government, through the election of Cabildos or Indigenous Councils, bodies 
composed of several members of the respective community that take on the internal 
administration of the group, particularly with regard to the distribution and administration 
of communal lands and the carrying out of minor policing measures to keep internal 
order.   
 
Cabildos were recognized by the state as public entities of a special character, 
incorporated into the country’s political and administrative structure.  As government 
bodies responding to communities, they have two main functions: governing the 
community and participating on their behalf in activities outside the community’s normal 
life, but relating to the defense of the group’s interest. 
 
The Agrarian Reform Law 135 of 1961 recognized the full rights of Indigenous people to 
property over their traditionally occupied lands. In the late 1960s INCORA implemented 
this law titling 73 resguardos of 1.0 million hectares.  This law did not mention Afro-
Colombians.  Using the few provisions in the Agrarian Law that related to Indigenous 
people, sectors of the Indigenous population who were engaged in menial or servile 
forms of work on haciendas and estates in the department of Cauca, launched a vigorous 
movement aimed at claiming back the lands they had lost or at widening their vital 
spaces, if they had any. 
 
The 1991 constitution confers upon the Indigenous territories the status of political and 
administrative institutions.  This legal concept formally gives the Indigenous 
communities a high degree of administrative and fiscal autonomy to conduct their 
internal affairs and their relations with other public and private bodies.  As a political and 
administrative entity integrated into the new constitutional system, an Indigenous 
territory can be governed by Indigenous authorities and a taxable base can be established 
for the members of the community.  In addition, each Indigenous territory has a share in 
the distribution of national income. Can administer its own resources and provide public 
services, or at least some of those that are provided by territorial entities, such as 
education, health, basic sanitation, and can undertake engineering projects beneficial to 
the community etc.  
 
Article 357 of the Constitution establishes the “Indigenous resguardo share in the nation’s 
current income,” such that all Indigenous communities who occupy a resguardo have the 
right to receive every year from the central government an amount of money proportional 
to the number of inhabitants, to cover administration expenses, provision of basic 
services and development programs.  
Page  22
22
 
Law 70 of August
 
1993 
 
Following from the Yanaconas meeting the National Planning Authority (DNP) agreed to 
guarantee the articulation of Transitory Article 55 that gives Afro-Colombians collective 
rights to territory which came about in the form of Law 70 in August 1993. This law 
recognizes Afro-Colombian populations as ethnic groups and recognizes their territorial 
rights in the Pacific Basin, in the form of collective territories. In conjunction with decree 
1745 of 1995, Law 70 stipulates how ethnic claims must be put forward, legal territorial 
recognition and what constitutes an Afro-Colombian ethnic group.  
 
The NRMP made concrete the titling of Black property.  While the constitution gave the 
recognition to the territory, the financial readiness and impulse to support the writing of 
this law on the part of the World Bank helped forge it into being.  
 
Law 70 defines Black communities to be based on ideas of ethnicity, which are framed 
with four criteria in mind; culture, history, occupation and location. Law 70 grants a form 
of self-
government in the “consejo comunitarios de comunidades negras” or Community 
Councils for Black communities. Nevertheless, the consejo comunitarios are formed in a 
confused legal conception and are the legal personification of the community and are thus 
constituted as entities with a purely private character. This private, not public character is 
granted by Law 70. Taken in this way, the consejo comunitarios are a clear disadvantage 
in comparison to the Indigenous Cabildos and the administrative councils of the future 
Indigenous Territorial Entities, which are clearly invested with attributions that are 
deeply buried in carrying out public functions.   
 
Law 160, the New Law of Agrarian Reform of 1994 
 
Law 160 was inspired by the constitutional view that it is the duty of the state to provide 
progressive access to landed property for agrarian workers and other rural public workers 
with the aim of improving the income and quality of life of the rural population.  
Additionally this law grants Indigenous peoples complete rights to property over 
traditionally occupied areas.  
 
Implementing Law 160, decree 2164 of 1995 consolidates the process of constituting a 
resguardo. It says that INCORA must make studies of the land necessities of Indigenous 
communities, to give and title sufficient and additional land adequate to their assets and 
development, recognizing the property they traditionally occupied, the preservation of the 
ethnic group and the improvement of the standard of living of its members, without 
jeopardizing or infringing on the rights of Black communities detailed in law 70 of 1993. 
 
Nevertheless, Article 85
 
of
law 160 states that INCORA and the MOE, in concert with 
the community institutions, have to verify and certify that the communities comply with 
the social and ecological (respectively) functions of the property with out specifying the 
Page  23
23
parameters by which this can be done.  Thus, territory traditionally used by Indigenous 
nomads, semi nomads and agriculturists who survive on hunting, relocation and 
horticulture that are situated in Forest Reserves, can be designated as an Indigenous 
resguardos but its occupation and use still fall under the provisions established by the 
MOE and their rules on renewable natural resources.  
 
Environmental Law
 
99 of 1993  
 
Law 99
 
set up the National Environmental System (SINA), the Ministry of Environment 
(MOE) and Regional Autonomous Corporations. Until Law 99 INDERENA was in 
charge of environmental affairs. The law promotes the integration of Indigenous and 
Black communities that traditionally inhabited the region in the process of conservation 
and the cooperation of the international community in compensating the efforts of local 
communities to defend their unique ecosystems.  
 
Citizen Participation
 
Law 312 of 1994 
 
This law outlines popular participation in political life as a right. The new constitution 
constructed a new model of national society defining the participation of civil society in 
the management of public affairs as supremely important.  The law requires and 
specifically grants to minority communities community participation in the management 
and decision making that affects their economic, social, political, administrative and 
cultural life is.  
 
As regards ethnic groups the objectives of participation in Law 312 are:  
1)  to assure their complete dominion and tranquil presence over territory,  
2)  to assure the protection of cultural patrimony of ethnic groups and the full respect of 
their identity,  
3)  to obtain an acceptable level of autonomy for the management of their internal affairs 
and to define their own models of development and their own strategies of 
improvement, 
4)  to contribute to the strengthening, in an increasing and sustainable manner, the 
climate of tolerance and respect for ethnic and cultural diversity in Colombia,  
5)  to assure their increased decision making power in the management of public affairs,  
6)  to provide in a progressive and sustainable manner the enjoyment of basic services 
especially health and education, as well as the ownership of new technology  
appropriate to environmental conditions, permitting ethnic groups to make adequate 
improvements to their resources and to improve their living conditions. 
 
The Influence of International Conventions: ILO and RAMSAR 
 
In conjunction with the World B
ank policy on Indigenous people’s, a number of 
International Conventions shaped the NRMP and its effects and possibilities of being 
carried out.  They either solidified the legal base the state was trying to create or 
structured the manner in which laws could be applied.   
 
Page  24
24
The International Labor Organization (ILO) Conventions 107 and 169 outline an 
international strategy regarding the rights, both civil and territorial, of Indigenous peoples 
in relation to their states.  These conventions were instrumental in setting the agenda for a 
policy towards Indigenous people by the Colombian state by influencing the form of the 
new national constitution. Convention 169 was ratified in 1991 a few months before the 
constitution came into being and is closely incorporated into legislation regarding 
Indigenous populations in Colombia. 
 
The Convention on Biodiversity (ratified in 1994) and the RAMSAR Convention on 
Wetlands of International Importance (ratified in 1971) outline the use of biodiversity and 
specifically wetlands affecting the implementation of titling as they identify areas of 
ecological fragility and international importance. Since the signing of the RAMSAR 
Convention mangrove swamps have been conceptually managed in Colombia as wetland 
ecosystems. This removes them from land that is available for titling and puts them under 
special protection of the MOE.  The status of mangroves as wetlands is of fundamental 
importance to community titling since a large proportion of traditional community 
territories contain mangrove swamps (as is detailed further in this paper). While these 
conventions lend weight to conservation projects they also outline the boundaries of land 
that can be titled to communities.    
 
The ILO Convention 107 of 1957 on the “protection and integration of Indigenous and 
tribal populations in independent countries”, helped to convert usufruct rights for 
Indigenous people in “territorial reserves” in Colombia to full territorial ownership as 
collective property. The program of legal recognition of Indigenous communities’ lands 
in forests and plains started in 1968 a year after the adoption and ratification of 
Convention 107 into national law as Law 31 of 1967. Based on article 11 of the 
Convention 300 or more resguardos were granted to the communities as their property 
between 1968 and the adoption of the ILO Convention 169 in 1989. 
 
The ILO Convention 169
 
labeled resguardo lands as inalienable, unmorgageable, non-
seizable and inprecsciptible inspired by the new idea of a territory as a space of life for a 
people. This guaranteed the participation of Indigenous people in running the affairs 
within their territories. Colombia was a signatory to the convention and instrumental in 
its formation. The Convention and the new 1991 national constitution were in agreement 
on a lot of stipulations over the rights of Indigenous people including the right: 
-
to preserve their integrity and that of their physical and cultural heritage  
-
to improve their conditions of life and to receive support for this purpose 
-
to participate and decide upon their own future 
-
to the cooperation of the state for the protection of their lives, their cultures and the 
environment of the territories that they inhabit 
-
to preserve and have due regard for their institutions, traditions and legal and social 
customs 
-
to demand and see justice done in connection with their rights 
-
to land and natural resources 
-
to health and social security 
-
to an education which is suited to their requirements and in keeping with their culture  
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25
-
to know their rights and see that their rights are known and respected by other members 
of the national society 
-
to communicate and cooperate among Indigenous peoples of frontier areas 
 
The Convention rejects all acts, which could violate the fundamental rights and freedoms 
of Indigenous peoples. Rights of citizenship of Indigenous peoples shall be recognized 
without restriction, and their enjoyment of special privileges belonging to them as 
Indigenous peoples shall not constitute an obstacle to their exercising of the rights 
granted to all citizens.  Colombia ratified the ILO Convention 169 four months before 
adopting the new Constitution with law 21 of 1991.  
 
The Process of Titling Collective Territories and the 
Pacific Today 
 
Since 1994 Bank funds have been used to contract Afro-Colombian and Indigenous 
community organizations to inform rural peoples about these new laws, as well as to set 
the groundwork for the granting of collective titles. For 18 months from June 1994 to 
December 1995, the activities of the components focused on establishing the legal and 
institutional conditions for implementing the Indigenous resguardo and Black community 
land titling processes.  The NRMP found that in order to make participation a reality it 
was necessary to: 1) strengthen communities and their organizations so they can take up 
the knowledge and responsibility of having territorial ownership and domination. This 
meant legal training, construction and consolidation of consejos comunitarios, 
regularization of management of natural resources, and definition and agreement on the 
boundaries of communities, and 2) necessary simultaneous training and capacity building 
of the institutional entity in charge of the procedures for instance INCORA. 
 
Soon after the Loan Effectiveness, a High-Level Consultative Commission and affiliated 
departmental commissions were established to carry out consultations for the 
regularization of Law 70.  The work of this commission, much of it financed under the 
Regional Committees component of the NRMP, resulted in Decree 1745 of 12 October 
1995.  This decree set out the procedures that make the titling of Afro-Colombian land 
possible. Decree 1745 regulates chapter III of Law 70 and defines rules and procedures 
for collective titling. It defines collective titling as fundamental to:  
 
1)  human rights,  
2)  cultural survival,  
3)  socio-economic development, and  
4)  natural resource protection and management.  
 
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26
 
Red de Solidaridad Social (RED) 
 
Much of the success of the Black Land Titling component can be attributed to the hard 
work of the RED in designing and implementing the Regional Committees component of 
the program.  The RED was created with the objective to promote the social and 
participatory side of development that:  
1)  promotes the advance of decentralization,  
2)  generates a better commitment to local collectivities in the creation of their 
self development,  
3)  consolidates new institutional models for the coordination and control of 
social politics in the territorial entities and promote social equality between all 
the population groups favoring the most vulnerable. 
 
The RED ensured that the views of Indigenous and Afro-Colombians were represented in 
the program, and the transparency and accountability between government and civil 
society organizations. They worked through seminars and workshops with government 
and community entities and programs on the workings of the NRMP where they could 
exchange points of view known as “Mixed Regional Committees”. The RED did training 
in environmental and ethnic legislation, helped institutions become appropriate to the 
region and promoted popular communication. They also produced a series of popular 
educational materials on law 70 and other laws pertaining to land titling and use. 
 
Regional Committees  
 
With the creation of the MOE and the conformation of the RED, Regional Committees 
were organized under the direction general of the Environmental Regularization and 
Territorial Planning of the MOE.  They were flexible meeting and consultation sites 
between the state and the communities of the Pacific region represented by their ethnic 
territorial organizations.  They were created to address the local, regional and national 
dynamics and expectations of the NRMP to produce a legal framework for the ethnic, 
territorial and environmental rights and issues.  
 
At first they provided technical assistance for the promotion of ethnic and territorial 
rights. Later, they began to promote these rights through strengthening the local 
communities and ethno-territorial authorities’ autonomous space, helping the 
Red de Solidaridad Social (RED) 
 
Much of the success of the Black Land Titling component can be attributed to the hard work 
of the RED in designing and implementing the Regional Committees component of the 
program.  The RED was created with the objective to promote the social and participatory 
side of development that:  
1)  promotes the advance of decentralization,  
2)  generates a better commitment to local collectivities in the creation of their self 
development,  
3)  consolidates new institutional models for the coordination and control of social 
politics in the territorial entities and promote social equality between all the 
population groups favoring the most vulnerable. 
 
The RED ensured that the views of Indigenous and Afro-Colombians were represented in the 
program, and the transparency and accountability between government and civil society 
organizations. They worked through seminars and workshops with government and 
community entities and programs on the workings of the NRMP where they could exchange 
points of view known as “Mixed Regional Committees”. The RED did training in 
environmental and ethnic legislation, helped institutions become appropriate 
to the region and 
promoted popular communication. They also produced a series of popular educational 
materials on law 70 and other laws pertaining to land titling and use. 
Regional Committees  
 
With the creation of the MOE and the conformation of the RED, Regional Committees 
were organized under the direction general of the Environmental Regularization and 
Territorial Planning of the MOE.  They were flexible meeting and consultation sites 
between the state and the communities of the Pacific region represented by their ethnic 
territorial organizations.  They were created to address the local, regional and national 
dynamics and expectations of the NRMP to produce a legal framework for the ethnic, 
territorial and environmental rights and issues.  
 
At first th
ey provided technical assistance for the promotion of ethnic and territorial rights. 
Later, they began to promote these rights through strengthening the local communities and 
ethno-territorial authorities’ autonomous space, helping the consolidation of rights, and 
promoting instances of democratic participation and consultation. Within the Regional 
Committees they came up with principals, criteria and guarantees to guide the process of 
collective titling. The strength of the Regional Committees that were run through the RED 
was that they had:  
 
1)
an emphasis on active participation of regional Black and Indigenous organizations
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27
consolidation of rights, and promoting instances of democratic participation and 
consultation. Within the Regional Committees they came up with principals, criteria and 
guarantees to guide the process of collective titling. The strength of the Regional 
Committees that were run through the RED was that they had:  
 
1)  an emphasis on active participation of regional Black and Indigenous organizations 
2)  pedagogical materials produced on the territorial rights of these populations.  
3)  initiatives to create inter-ethnic dialogue between Black and Indigenous 
organizations, as well as with state and regional institutions. 
 
One of the strengths of the Regional Committees is that their agreements set both a trend 
and a bench mark from which to claim rights and compliance on the part of the state. In 
the medium term the Regional Committees highlight participation in planning, follow-up 
and evaluation of the program, looking to harmonize the objectives with the rights and 
interests of the local population.  In the long term they present a challenge to build a 
strategy of regional transference and appropriation of the results of NRMP, both at the 
institutional level and that of the ethnic, territorial and urban organizations of the Pacific, 
understood as the joint actions of communication, training and consultation to promote 
the conservation of natural resources in the region.  
 
Although the NRMP considers titling as the condition necessary for the conservation of 
the natural patrimony of the communities and the nation, the scope of the Regional 
Committees is limited as a space where the ethno-territorial organization of the Pacific 
can concur, because of being so tightly connected to the process of titling. Regional 
Committees need to widen the focus of discussions to include other aspects of the 
NRMP, for instance, of ecological zoning and national parks.  Additionally the lack of 
leadership of the Regional Committees led to the impression among some Afro-
Colombian organizations that gaining or initiating the distribution of economic resources, 
in particular land, was the aim of the process rather than just a portion.  
 
Community Participation and Institutional Performance:  
INCORA and Indigenous Land Titling 
 
One of the
 
benefits of the NRMP was that due to community participation and awareness 
of the program there was a rapid feedback mechanism regarding compliance with goals. 
Indigenous organizations were particularly forthright in demanding and pursuing 
compliance in the demarcation and titling of resguardos.  The most vocal of these 
community organizations, OREWA, wrote letters to the implementing agencies, to the 
World Bank and even to the President of Colombia demanding accountability and 
compliance.  
 
OREWA’s main complaint was that since INCORA had started titling collective 
territories for Black communities they had stopped titling and demarcating Indigenous 
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28
resguardos. A major finding of the mid term review in 1997, was that INCORA was 
dragging its feet and creating the potential for increased inter-ethnic conflict through 
faster pace of implementation of the Black community activities and a lack of 
coordination of the Indigenous and Black community programs. From September through 
December of 1997 there was a growing concern on the part of 
World Bank staff that “it is 
a
great irony, that we would have titled Afro-Colombian land but at the price of the 
progress of the Indians” because of this delayed action and inactivity of INCORA in 
regard to Indigenous resguardos.   
 
Through support to OREWA’s concerns, and letters to the MOE and INCORA, the 
World Bank pushed for compliance, and accountability with treats to withhold the loan.  
They advocated a change in personnel, the institutional and legal reorganization of 
INCORA, making Indigenous resguardo titling a high priority, an external evaluation and 
the integration of Regional Committees for conflict resolution.  
 
As external evaluations, mid-term reviews and community complaints all indicated 
serious concern about the progress of Titling and Regional Committees, the World Bank 
sent a supervision mission in January of 1998 where they determined the MOE should 
elaborate a Plan of Action determining how they plan to address the problems of the 
Land Titling and Regional Committee components by end of February 1998. 
 
OREWA did not cease acting as an overseer and pushing their own specific agenda.  
Right up to the present they continue monitoring the progress of the demarcation and 
titling of resguardos specified by the Action Plan. They continue to accuse INCORA of 
lacking political will to carry out the titling duties assigned to it, especially in the regional 
offices.  Their strategy of contacting all those involved regarding their complaints 
remains an effective way to participate as a local community organization. 
 
The Action Plan of March, 1998 
 
After the meetings of Yanaconas in Cali in 1992, the Action Plan of 1998 is the most 
important turning point in the process of the NRMP’s components of a Land Titling and 
Regional Committees.  This Action Plan was developed to link the operational plans for 
all three components into a single integrated work program with specific goals, including 
a
strategy for documenting the experience and lessons learned by the NRMP and 
participating institutions. 
 
The Action Plan was set up to combat the tensions between the community and the 
government.  It provided specific goals and the mechanisms to achieve them that allowed 
for the achievement of the Land Titling and Regional Committee component goals. This 
plan included strategies of territorial definition, capacity building, strengthening of 
intercultural understandings and conflict resolution.  
 
More specifically it recommended that: 
1)  INCORA develop a computerized data system for tracking the process of titling. 
Page  29
29
2)  INCORA contract regional Indigenous organizations to assist in conducting the 
delimitation and other topographic work necessary for the constitution of resguardos.   
3)  INCORA prepare a special land regularization plan for the constitution of resguardos 
in Cauca
,
Valle and Nariño. 
4)  The RED and other cooperating institutions should organize a special meeting of the 
inter-ethnic Regional Committee to discuss and agree upon INCORA’s operational 
plan for the two titling components and to resolve any outstanding issues or conflicts. 
5)  INCORA outline specific land titling goals for Black and Indigenous communities, 
defining the number of titles to be issued or the hectarage to be covered in the time 
remaining. 
 
The Action Plan brought forward the important role of Inter-ethnic Regional Committees 
in conflict resolution, and coordination between Black and Indigenous community 
activities. The process of agreeing on the Plan of Action and the framework of 
measurable objectives in the Plan have played an important role in increasing 
coordination among the various implementing agencies, in establishing greater trust 
between these agencies and the indigenous and Black community organizations of the 
Pacific coast, and in promoting greater transparency and accountability.  For the first time 
a
systematic data base exists on the status of land regularization for both the Indigenous 
and Black communities, and monitoring of performance in meeting the milestones set for 
in the plan for 1998-99.  Only with the formation of the Action Plan and clear 
corresponding strategies and criteria did the Land Titling and Regional Committee 
components of the NRMP gain its own momentum after moving very slowly.
 
Expulsion of Regional Directors of INCORA
.
Due to community pressure, mainly from Indigenous groups, 2 regional directors of 
INCORA were forced to leave their positions. In 1998 the government of Colombia 
removed 9 out of 25 regional directors from their jobs because of inefficiency and 
irregularities. This reshuffle of functionaries of INCORA included 2 regional directors in 
the Pacific.  The director from the Chocó was removed for inefficiency and 
administrative disorder and the director from Cauca because of inefficiency in the titling 
of Indigenous resguardos.   
 
The Unique Experience of Titling Collective Territories For Black Communities: 
ACIA 
 
The NRMP is responsible for 100% of land collectively titled to Black Communities in 
Colombia today.  By June of 2000 the program had titled 1.65 million hectares of land to 
360 Black communities benefiting 18,000 families.  The first Black community collective 
title issued was the title of la Madre, in Bajo Atrato the only title issued in 1996.  Another 
6
titles were issued the following year including the title to ACIA for a territory of 
695,254 hectares.  The pace of titling picked up after the Action Plan of 1998 with the 
majority of titles being issued between 1998 and 2000.   
 
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30
ACIA, representing over 100 communities in one of the most remote, riparian areas in the 
Chocó region, was given their title deed for 695,254 hectares on 11 of Feb 1998 by 
Ernesto Samper, the then president of Colombia, to mark the auspicious occasion. As one 
of the first titles issued and definitely the largest, the process of titling the ACIA territory 
acts as a model for titling of collective territories for Black communities throughout the 
Pacific region.  
 
The process of obtaining the titles was arduous.  ACIA had to first negotiate the meeting 
and contract for mobilization, and training of the communities, then gather and process 
information, consult and agree with Indigenous, private and other organizations holding 
property, with other Black communities and the state and now define the new 
responsibilities since titling. The initial management of funds was difficult because of the 
number of entities and people involved in the formalization of the accord since the 
process was structured for international governments and entities rather than poor rural 
farmers with a high percentages of illiterate members.  
 
Thanks to their community work done before the process of titling, ACIA not only had a 
huge knowledge of the communities but a formidable ability to call meetings. They were 
thus able to do an intense job and hold 139 community workshops, 9 zonal workshops, 
and one great General Assembly. In order to solve border difficulties they created with 
OREWA and OIA (Organización Indígena de Antioquia) an Inter-ethnic Commission to 
look for solutions. With private property owners and other communities they directly 
negotiated on a case-by-case basis.  
 
However, similar to what happened to other communities along the Atrato river, in 1999 
external armed groups imposed control as the only power within the territory and many 
of the members of ACIA were displaced as refugees in urban centers.  This was a very 
real negation of the exercise of construction of community self-governing and autonomy. 
Nevertheless, in 2000, thanks to the title and the new legal security over their land the 
communities of ACIA have managed to neutralize to a large extent the advance of the 
war in their territory. 
 
Violence and Collective Territories of Ethnic Groups 
 
The Pacific, which used to be on the margins of Colombian violence, has experienced 
dramatic changes that affected the models of traditional territorial appropriation of Black 
and Indigenous communities with the simultaneous degradation of the ecosystem since 
the late 1980s. These changes include: the state trying to integrate the region to the 
international markets, the fight of many companies for access to the forest and mineral 
resources, the domination of certain territories by drug traffickers, the increase in the 
region of armed confrontation between the military, paramilitary and guerrilla, and the 
model of cattle ranching colonization typical of other regions of the country and finally 
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31
the configuration of Indigenous or Black social movements in defense of their territory 
and culture. 
 
Today the phenomenon of violence causes a permanent state of anxiety among the 
inhabitants as the armed groups carry out terrorist actions, murder and retaliation in the 
countryside, which caused large displacements of poor peasants to larger urban centers. 
Although drug and political armed violence are somewhat independent they are more and 
more interconnected every day.  
 
These violent conditions directly impact the Land Titling and Regional Committee 
components of the NRMP.  For instance, shortly after the collective titles of the Black 
communities of la Nueva, Dos Bocas, Taparal, Clavellino and Chicao of the Lower 
Atrato river were issued in 1997 the populations were displaced by paramilitary. In 1998 
other displaced communities of the Lower Atrato river sent a letter to the World Bank 
saying that being displaced makes it more difficult to obtain a title. They requested the 
participation of the International Red Cross, the office of the High Commissioner for 
Refugees of the UN and delegates from the Dioceses of Apartado and Chocó to form part 
of a high-level commission to look into titling and violence. They demanded collective 
entitlement as part of their proposal for a dignified return to their territories. 
 
On the other hand in the case of rio Sucio in the Chocó, the very fact of the titling of 
collective territories for Black communities contributed to the return of numerous 
displaced inhabitants and communities, although the confrontation with armed groups 
continues. Nevertheless the capacity of communities to maintain peace, their possession 
of the land and to reasonably manage the environment is appearing to be increasingly 
affected. The effects include: 
 
1)  the breaking up of social networks and governing forms internal to the communities, 
in the incorporation of youths in these groups, the auto-proclamation as agents of 
justice or governing by forest agents in place of community authority, and the 
destruction of traditional cultural values and internal rules.  
2)  disturbed economic life and traditional form of work.  Although this is done in many 
ways the removal of family members from traditional everyday activities by armed 
groups or drug traffickers and the abandoning of rural plots for urban areas when 
displaced has the greatest impact. 
3)  the break up of traditional ways of managing nature, using natural resources and 
defense of ecosystems in the introduction into the regional economy illicit crops as a 
financial front for armed groups, the toleration of these groups non regulated use of 
forest and mines and the possibilities of quick money.  
 
In spite of this insecurity and upheaval brought about by the violent situation, land titles 
lend a specific long-term stability to communities.  They serve not only to mark the legal 
boundaries of territory today, but to ensure the existence of the communities into the 
future.  Andean Colombia has a long history of land titles demonstrating ethnic or 
community existence.  Similar to Royal titles issued by the Spanish Crown during the 
colonial period to Indigenous communities in the Andes, the collective titles of the 
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32
Pacific prove the existence of the community as a community and as an ethnic group to 
the wider Colombian nation.  In the Andes many Indigenous communities ceased to be 
recognized as Indigenous, and their lands ceased to be recognized as their territories 
because they did not possess or could not prove their connection to, royal titles over the 
land.  
 
One might argue that there is no point in titling land if those that possess the title cannot 
live there due to their displacement to urban areas because of violence.  Nevertheless, the 
collective title not only sets up a legal basis to claim back the territory but it specifically 
registers the social, cultural and political existence of the communities associated with 
the land and the moral obligation of the state to the members. Thus, in a less violent 
future the titles facilitate the return of these people to their territories and traditional ways 
of life. 
 
Ethnic Conflict and Resolution 
 
The titling of collective territories for Indigenous and Black communities was not without 
conflict.  Importantly the exercise of titling itself produced an escalation in ethnic conflict 
over territory.  These conflicts had existed prior to the program, especially where Black 
communities had particularly insecure rights to land, while Indigenous communities held 
specific legal rights over neighboring and at times coterminous land, and where both 
communities were poorly organized. As the possibility of titling collective territory for 
Black communities became a reality conflicts arouse over territorial boundaries and over 
the process and rapidity of titling.  At the same time the government policy of  
“cleansing” of resguardos through the removal of non-Indigenous populations increased 
the friction between Indigenous and Black communities.   
 
The context of ethnic conflict and its relation to the NRMP is complex and depends on 
the prior relationship between Indigenous and Black communities, their relative 
participation as functionaries of the state, and their unequal legal access to secure title to 
land. On one hand it was difficult for Indigenous communities used to a certain process 
of titling to accept new restrictions and procedures for titling, such as environmental 
restrictions or having to consult with Black communities over boundaries.  On the other 
hand INCORA stopped titling of Indigenous resguardos in the Chocó for almost 2 years 
during the NRMP, causing a strong impression of the lack of political will on the part of 
the  government to title Indigenous territory.   
 
With the possibility of obtaining legalization of their territory some Black communities 
no longer accepted the principals behind “cleansing” arguing that these lands were 
traditionally ancestral lands of Black communities. These pockets of land within 
resguardos became bones of contention. At the same time, in certain areas of the Pacific 
such as the Chocó, as the main functionaries in government institutions or in politics, 
Afro-Colombians used these positions to secure rights they deemed appropriated from 
them.  
 
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33
In 1997 the first Inter-Ethnic Regional Committee was held in Perico Negro, in the 
municipality of Puerto Tejada.  It was organized by INCORA and set up to revise 
tensions and possible inter-ethnic conflicts, and to develop knowledge of the territorial 
rights, the action of the state and external violent factors. Black Communities and 
Indigenous organizations participated and so did national and regional implementing 
entities. The committee concluded that the Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities 
still maintain traditional methods of conflict resolution that should be supported and 
promoted,  and that it was nonetheless still necessary to adjust the actions of the different 
state entities for conflict resolution and to strengthen these mechanisms.  
 
These Inter-Ethnic Regional Committees can be seen as the third turning point in the 
NRMP after the meeting of Yanaconas, and the Action Plan that fundamentally changed 
and enabled the program to accomplish its goals.  Through these Inter-Ethnic Regional 
Committees the Regional Committees were transformed from principally training, 
capacity building and information dissemination sites to highly effective sites of conflict 
resolution.   
 
Community Organization and Conflict Resolution 
 
In 1998 the community organizations of the middle Atrato river, ACIA, OREWA and 
OIA used the Regional Committees to consult and come to an agreement over their 
territorial limits. The territory of Indigenous communities of OIA and OREWA surround 
the large territory of ACIA rising up from the Atrato river valley on one side to the 
Cordillera Central and the other to the Coast ranges. There were pockets of Indigenous 
and Black communities living within the territories of the other group.  At the same time 
there were disputes over the boundaries of the already recognized territories.   
 
Through the process of consultation and prioritization they were able to determine the 
final land mass of ACIA and delimit the neighboring 16 resguardos. The accord made 
possible the constitution of 8 resguardos in department of the Chocó in 1998 and eased 
the following constitution of 6 others in department of the Chocó and 2 in the department 
of Antioquia. The accord included the exchange of land to consolidate territory and in 
some areas the shared management of territory between Indigenous and Black 
communities. These communities were able to come to such agreements because of their 
strong, long-term organization, which had been strengthened through their participation 
in the NRMP. 
 
What is a Collective Title? 
 
Interethnic Territories 
 
The settlement dynamic of Black and Indigenous communities is not necessarily 
homogeneous with separate populations occupying clearly defined spaces.  In reality 
throughout the Pacific Black and Indigenous populations are interconnected not only 
through trade but also through kinship, ceremonies and shared territorial spaces. 
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34
Ironically, Law 70 truncated the process of forming interethnic territories.  This 
legislation does not take into account the historical dynamics of the rural communities of 
the Pacific due to a lack of research and description of the types of settlements and 
relations that exist between these populations.  
 
Since 1998 the communities of San Juan requested a joint Black and Indigenous Territory 
-
the Territorio Wounaan-Negro. From San Juan south settlements do not follow the 
homogeneous rules that characterizes the Atrato or the Baudó.  This is important to 
recognize when using ACIA as a model for future titling.  Trying to force the 
communities into tenure systems that do not reflect their social reality can cause conflicts.  
At times Black communities have no territorial options outside of joint territories with 
Indigenous communities and the titling process could dispossess them. To make spaces 
for the reality of interethnic territories as a tenure modality and reduce conflicts through 
the incorporation of historical pasts of the communities, legislation needs to reflect the 
actual settlement patterns of the two communities.  
 
The Legal Status of Ethnic Administration: Cabildos vs. 
Consejo Comunitarios 
 
The existence of special legislation in independent forms gave rights to Indigenous and 
Black communities over areas that they occupy, but did not resolve complex situations 
where one or other share territories and have managed to develop forms of shared 
understanding and administration.  One of the reasons that this is particularly difficult is 
the different status of the governing bodies of these territorial entities, and essentially the 
status of the territorial entities themselves.   
 
The cabildo, the governing body for Indigenous resguardos, is a public entity of a special 
character incorporated into the country’s political and administrative structures.  It is an 
autonomous institution that receives funds from the central government can collect taxes 
and make and administer laws within its territories and carries out public services and 
minor policing measures to keep internal order.  It is integrated into the political system 
at the constitutional level. 
 
The consejo comunitario, the governing body for collective territories of Black 
communities, on the other hand, is the legal personification of the community and is thus 
constituted with a purely private character.  It retains an undefined and ambiguous 
autonomy because it pertains to the municipality and relies on the municipality for the 
transfer of resources and revenues as it does not receive funds from the central 
government. Nevertheless, it is not within the authority jurisdiction of the municipality.  
It is unclear whether the consejo comunitario has the authority to collect taxes and make 
and administer laws within its territories or carry out public services and minor policing 
measures to keep internal order.  It is integrated into the political system at the legislative 
level. 
 
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35
As a result the ability of consejos comunitarios for Black communities, if compared to 
Indigenous cabildos and councils of territorial entities which have a public character, to 
authorize an adequate administration of community interests severely limits the 
perspective and possibilities of future territorial and communal development and 
management.   
 
A
key thing to note is that the main difference between the legal recognition between 
Black and Indigenous territories is that for the Indigenous communities the law 
recognizes some degree of Indigenous territorial control and provides for limited 
autonomy or self-rule.  For Black communities the law recognizes more of a corporate 
structure similar community forests in the USA, with limited self-rule potential.   
 
The Legal Status of Collective Titles and Public-Use 
Goods 
 
Similar to many coastal territories of the Pacific, the traditional territory of the Peasant 
Association of Rio Patia, ACAPA, in Nariño includes intertidal plains covered by 
mangrove swamps, which they have used traditionally for subsistence production in 
fishing and collection of sea resources including bivalves and mollusks.  The status of 
these mangrove swamps as land or sea, as public or private use goods, and thus as able to 
be titled or not, raises some important issues about the status of Collective Titles for 
Black Communities, the level of autonomy and control of community councils, the 
relationship between environmental policy and community involvement, and finally the 
inequality of rights between Indigenous and Black collective territories (standardization 
of the law).  
 
Although the MOE and the community representatives ACAPA signed an accord in June 
of 1998 allowing the territory of ACAPA to be titled explicitly leaving out the areas of 
mangrove swamps the communities later protested the loss of over 20% of their territory.  
They argued that the mangroves are their sustainable livelihood that guarantee their food 
security, experience has demonstrated that the Black communities have conserved the 
mangroves historically, and a high percentage of the Pacific Territories contain 
mangroves. Thus the inclusion of the mangroves within the title up holds their 
constitutional right to protect their ethnic and cultural diversity and a real recognition of 
the collective right to territory of the lands of the Pacific Basin by Black communities.  
 
In 1999 INCORA had a meeting to analyze and conceptualize the juridical nature of 
mangrove zones and the implications for Collective Titling for Black communities. After 
considering technical and legal arguments they came to the conclusion that the areas of 
mangrove are not to be excluded from the titleable areas.  They requested the go ahead to 
title from the MOE. However, neither INCORA nor the MOE wanted to take a stand 
regarding the titling of mangrove areas and neither proceeded 
 
In April of 1999 the legal office of the MOE was asked to state their position on the legal 
nature of the mangrove zones and their implication for the titling of collective property 
Page  36
36
fo
r
Black communities of the Pacific. It was the opinion of the legal office that “the MOE 
is not the entity in charge of defining if a good is or is not of public use, in spite of its 
involvement in the theme especially when it was part of the technical commission and 
when the discussion involves areas that house mangrove ecosystems, according to articles 
12 and 48 of law 160 of 1994 and article 20 of the regulatory decree 2663 of 1994 
INCORA is the entity that has the function of delineating goods of public use, that can 
not be included in the collective titles as stated in article 6 of law 70 of 1993 and article 
19 of decree 1745 of 1995.”   
 
In the end INCORA and the MOE adopted the formula that had been used decades ago 
for the constitution of Indigenous reserves, that INCORA issue the title to the 
communities excluding the mangrove swamps, recognizing public ownership over the 
mangrove swamps as according to the law they could not be titled.  Then the 
communities were awarded usufruct rights to the areas excluded.   
 
While the usufruct rights to public use goods in the case of the mangroves seems a 
practical solution to conflicting policies of environmental protection and community 
control over natural resource management, the solution points to the limits of 
participation and ownership on the part of the community.  These are also indications of 
the types of habitats considered manageable by communities and those that are not.  For 
instance, the conversion of Indigenous reserves to Indigenous resguardos in the Pacific 
was a recognition of the communities ability of manage forests and a transference of the 
control of this management to the community level.  It would appear that wetlands are 
not yet considered manageable by communities.  
 
In mid 2000 OREWA wrote to the MOE requesting closure on the mangrove issue from 
the point of view of the Indigenous legislation to solve the problem of the Indigenous 
peoples who live in mangrove areas and use them traditionally. Deemed public use goods 
one would assume closure on the mangrove issue had been reached when addressing the 
problem in relation to Black communities.  Nonetheless, because the two ethnic groups 
do not fall under the same legislation, and the titles do not title exactly the same thing, 
and Indigenous territories as public entities may be able to contain public use goods, the 
issue must be readdressed regarding Indigenous territories.  
 
Some Benefits of Collective Titling and Participation; 
1)  the process of titling contributed to ethnic identification in a participatory manner, 
community organization and access to clear tenure. 
2)  the participatory nature of the program increased the community’s security in their 
capacity to make claims and to manage resources. 
Some Benefits of Collective Titling and Participation; 
1)  the process of titling contributed to ethnic identification in a participatory manner, 
community organization and access to clear tenure. 
2)  the participatory nature of the program increased the community’s security in their capacity 
to make claims and to manage resources. 
3) 
the efforts to obtain titles and the titling itself has contributed to strengthen the internal forms 
of government and the community’s negotiating capacity. 
4) 
titling gave a more clear and solid ownership or dominion over their territory and a legal base 
effective to protect it.  
5)  in the context of armed conflict the winning of ownership over the land, through NRMP, has 
represented for many communities of the Pacific a real possibility for the defense of life and 
a
degree of independence from the conflict.  
6)
titling has acted as a base for bargaining and legitimacy.
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37
3)  the efforts to obtain titles and the titling itself has contributed to strengthen the 
internal forms of government and the community’s negotiating capacity. 
4)  titling gave a more clear and solid ownership or dominion over their territory and a 
legal base effective to protect it.  
5)  in the context of armed conflict the winning of ownership over the land, through 
NRMP, has represented for many communities of the Pacific a real possibility for the 
defense of life and a degree of independence from the conflict.  
6)  titling has acted as a base for bargaining and legitimacy. 
7)  other programs had been programs of the government and not long term programs of 
the state.  The NRMP was able to cover three government administrations as the 
communities were the stabilizing factor through the changed of administrations. 
8)  participation contribute to the maintenance of traditional knowledges and cultures. 
9)  the titling of Black community land was a determining factor in the defense of 
biodiversity.  
 
Impact of the Land Titling and Regional Committees Components of NRMP 
 
There are four areas of impact of the above three components: 
1)  communicational - between state and local organizations as well as between 
local organizations and the people. 
2)  organizational – the structure and unity of organizations. 
3)  spatial – territorial authority and control. 
4)  temporal – structural change and long term influences.  
 
Communicational Impact
:
Communication is a major problem throughout the region. The difficulty of uniting 
people across the region is a weakness of the program making it hard to centralize 
decisions and to coordinate work.  Local communities have tried to ameliorate the 
situation by asking for an autonomous space to get together before the meetings of the 
Regional Committees in order to consolidate a regional position beforehand.  
 
Community organizations, but especially Afro-Colombian organizations, felt that the 
process of titling enhanced their cultural cohesion and awareness.  Through this process 
the communities demarcated and reactivated the oral history of their people and 
territories and built up the self-awareness and education about their culture. The titling 
process consisted in making social maps of the territory including maps for the future and 
the past, of narrating and recording the history of the people, their culture and their 
traditional practices and detaining the social relationships with the communities around 
them. This generated a huge excitement at learning from the older generations by the 
young and understanding the internal diversity of the communities.  
 
The titling process also helped recuperate the cultural process of use of the territory and 
traditional knowledge about biodiversity.  This took place through a community 
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38
intellectual movement including hunters, gathers, the elderly and traditional doctors to 
reconstruct the history of settlement of the territory, and to explain from their own 
perspective the importance and use of the natural resources that exist.  Part of this 
knowledge is left in maps and minutes (memorias) from the workshops of social 
mapping.  Most importantly, as expressed by some of the Afro-Colombian participants, 
the young and the old, the men and women were put together to synthesize traditional 
knowledge about the biological resources and the community territory as part of their 
own identity. The communities felt that this combined effort was particularly informative 
and useful.  
 
Law 70 generated an institutional coordination framework such that the MOE, INCORA 
and the RED were able to work together without conflict.  This institutional coordination 
was amplified by the Regional Committees and consultations.  Adversely, the strong 
unity between the three organizations had the initial effect of distancing the Ministry of 
the Interior and in particular the High-Level Consultative Commission, since most of its 
job and space was taken over by the RED.  However, the interethnic Regional Committee 
in Perico Negro, Puerto Tejada in August 1997 recuperated the High-Level Consultative 
Commission as the Committee brought it into agreements on the necessity of defining 
territory.  
 
Organizational Impact
:
The natural institutional rhythm of the implementing agencies was accelerated by the 
agreements with the World Bank on goals, resources and deadlines.  There was a 
combination of political will, resources and social demand, which made the project the 
success that it was.   
 
A
lot of the success was due to the coordinating efforts on the part of the PCU in the 
MOE which had to balance limiting and controlling spending with giving autonomy and 
agency to the institutions they worked with. Their ability lay in the rigidity in which they 
demanded compliance with deadlines and funding accountability, and the flexibility they 
gave the institutions in planning and going about their work. As the PCU was not 
responsible for the implementation of projects, although fully responsible for the use of 
funds, they served as strong overseers of spending. The structuring of this facilitating 
mechanism within the MOE is an important lesson for the coordination of future projects. 
Additionally the people who worked on the NRMP had an amazingly high level of 
dedication and enthusiasm for the project both at the World Bank and in Colombia. 
 
The MOE discovered during the program that the cheapest form of strengthening 
environmental institutions was through the participation of the people in the process such 
that they were in charge of the project themselves.  This type of participation was novel.  
Previously the conservation programs had placed the environment before the social such 
that people were not involved until after the creation of the legislation. They later 
discovered that the long-term effect of titling has been conservation through 
appropriation. Because of the stability that titles provide they have witnessed an interest 
in conservation by communities of the region. 
 
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39
At first INCORA had a sole division attending Indigenous and Black communities within 
one area of administration.  Law 70 of 1993 and Decree 1745 of 1995 along with 
community pressure was a great push to force the titling of Black community territory. 
The national government named Ortilia Vegas, a Black woman, as manager of INCORA 
in the Pacific and under her INCORA separated the single program attending ethnic 
groups into two separate programs at the end of 1997.   
 
At a time when INCORA was dividing the unit attending Indigenous and Black 
community land titling, the RED instituted Interethnic Regional Committees (they had 
started out as separate Black and Indigenous Regional Committees). The changes that 
took place in INCORA would appear to have allowed for, and perhaps demanded, the 
complimentary change in the RED.  As the Collective Territories for Black Communities 
became a reality with the reordering of the administration within INCORA, the resolution 
of interethnic conflict became more important as well. 
 
Spatial Impact
:
The new territorial units challenge old ideas of power and authority between the 
Territories of Black Communities, Resguardos and Municipalities, contesting control 
over 1) land, 2) resources in general 3) natural resources in particular and 4) permissions 
and licenses for extraction and exploitation of minerals. This becomes obvious in 
instances such as the formation of Plans of Territorial Regularization. The PCU has to 
coordinate between these territorial units as well. The uncertainty of these relations is 
compounded by the fact that Consejos Comunitarios do not receive funds for services 
such as health and education from the central government as do Indigenous Resguardos, 
but rather depend on the municipality for such funds, yet they are not within the authority 
jurisdiction of the municipality. 
 
The shortage of vacant land (baldíos) in the Pacific Coast affects the sustainability of the 
project to continue titling in the future. It will soon not be possible to extend territories in 
the Pacific except through the purchase of private property. This is already becoming a 
problem in areas where resguardos cannot be amplified without encroaching on land held 
by others.  INCORA is trying to address this problem outside of the Pacific by buying 
private property to deed as collective titles to Black communities. 
 
Temporal Impact
:
The titling of property changed people’s way of thinking about their region, especially for 
Black communities.  They began to think about it as a naturally rich area where 
remaining rather than migrating was now an option.  Now that the land has been removed 
from the market there has been a repopulating of the territory accompanied by a rise in 
ethnic identification. Additionally, the support of the existence of solid regional and 
grassroots organizations and the security offered by legally recognized territorial 
dominion has been invaluable for struggles for peace. 
 
The NRMP’s model of participation can serve as an example for other projects that 
would like to define and adopt participatory strategies. The model has contributed to 
strengthening the image and the legitimacy of state entities that assume the responsibility 
Page  40
40
to carry out their functions in the eyes of the public. A real interest in the environment 
and sustainable development developed among the community. At present a large 
percentage of the community organizations are working on management plans for their 
territories. Nevertheless the environmental authorities are not taking advantage of this 
favorable occurrence to development initiatives more in accord with the communities to 
maintain and consolidate the commitment. 
 
The sustainability of Collective Territories in the
 
future depends on: a) being part of an 
environmental policy, b) the control and use of natural resources, c) the accompaniment 
of productive activities to prevent reversion, d) management plans, and e) the resolution 
of internal conflicts between individual and collective credit and organization. The latter 
is particularly hard as there is no clear policy about credit and each community 
organization has to deal separately with the problem.  For instance, ACIA invented a 
usufruct contract so that farmers could obtain credit. 
 
The government is trying to incorporate the ideas of the Collective Land Titling and 
Regional Committees components of the NRMP into macro political policies for the 
Pacific allowing them to slowly become structurally part of policy development.  The 
Organic Law of Territorial Regularization for land use planning is going to emphasize 
territorial entities.  However, while Indigenous Resguardos are going to become 
Indigenous Territorial Entities and have equal power to municipalities, the Collective 
Territories of Black Communities have less autonomy and pertain to municipalities and 
rely on them for the transfer of  resources and revenues.  This is a constitutional condition 
and only a change in the constitution can affect this administrative positioning. 
 
INCORA has begun for the first time to incorporate the theme of Black Communities in 
their new Plan of Operation along with that of Indigenous Communities. They have 
begun a program to buy land in areas outside of the Pacific for Black Communities who 
don’t have land.  They have already purchased land in San Andreas, Santander and in the 
North of Cauca, and have had petitions for titles in three territories out side of the Pacific 
in Cartagena, Caldas, and Antioquia (Uraba). This had been part of the demands of 
Regional Committees of Black Communities since 1998. 
 
Nevertheless INCORA is dropping the use of Regional Committees outside of the Pacific 
Basin because; 1) the specificity of the Pacific enabled the success and utility of Regional 
Committees while other areas do not have the same conditions, and 2) the jurisdiction of 
the RED to call Regional Committees is limited to the Pacific. They claimed to have 
learned from the strategy of participation of Regional Committees and from the High-
Level Consultative Commission.  However, they appear to see the Regional Committees 
as capacity building arena and do not take seriously their conflict resolution potential.  
Lessons Learned 
 
The Program: 
The NRMP also shows that to make participation effective a program needs to work with 
the community or organizations that have direct interest in the solution to the problem. 
Page  41
41
Many environment programs are programs of the government and not long-term 
programs of the state.  The NRMP was able to cover three government administrations 
because the communities were the stabilizing factor through the changes of 
administrations.  Indigenous and Black people have a large awareness of the right to 
participate, and have come to demand and obtain it in part without direct laws or 
regulations. The state entities recognize it just a responsibility and requirement of a 
quality of service of public administration. Law 70 generated an institutional coordination 
framework such that the MOE, INCORA and the RED were able to work together 
without conflict. It is important that these advantages become institutionalized. 
 
The natural institutional rhythm of the implementing agencies was accelerated by the 
agreements with the World Bank on goals, resources and deadlines.  A lot of the success 
was due to the coordinating efforts on the part of the PCU in the MOE, which had to 
balance limiting and controlling spending with giving autonomy and agency to the 
institutions they worked with. Their ability lay in the rigidity in which they demanded 
compliance with deadlines and funding accountability, and the flexibility they gave the 
institutions in planning and going about their work. 
 
In spite of the ample praise given to the functioning of the Regional Committees both as 
capacity builders and as conflict resolution mechanisms, they seemed the least 
structurally incorporated into policies and future plans of implementing organizations. 
Perhaps this is because they were organized and administered by the RED whose 
jurisdiction and future existence is uncertain at the moment. Nevertheless, the lack of 
incorporation of Regional Committees as conflict resolution mechanisms in future 
projects of administering institutions, but especially within INCORA, is a wasted lesson. 
Institutions whose future plans do not include Regional Committees should include in 
their analysis of sustainability alternatives in popular participation. 
 
Institutions: 
Structural institutional transformations, not just within the local community organizations 
but also within the executing and coordinating agencies, are the basis of sustainability in 
such a program. The NRMP found that in order to make participation a reality it was 
necessary to: 1) strengthen communities and their organizations so they can take up the 
knowledge and responsibility of having territorial ownership and domination. This meant 
legal training, construction and consolidation of consejos comunitarios, regularization of 
management of natural resources, and definition and agreement on the boundaries of 
communities, and 2) necessary simultaneous training and capacity building of the 
institutional entity in charge of the procedures, for instance, INCORA. 
 
Conservation: 
The long term effect of titling has been conservation through appropriation assuring a 
solid base for conservation. Because of the stability that titles provide they have 
witnessed an interest in conservation by communities of the region. Thus making titling a 
determining factor in the defense of biodiversity.  The titling of property changed 
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42
people’s way of thinking about their region, especially for Black communities.  Now that 
the land is removed from the market there has been a repopulating of the territory 
accompanied by a rise in ethnic identification. 
 
The NRMP was able to work from, and with the legal transformations, to make real some 
of the rights guaranteed in the constitution and to push for compliance with others, while 
at the same time the political will of the constitution enabled the NRMP to develop and 
implement environmental and territorial policy. 
 
The participatory nature of the program increased the community’s security in their 
capacity to make claims and to manage resources. The titling process also helped 
recuperate the cultural process of use of the territory and traditional knowledge about 
biodiversity.  This took place through a community intellectual movement including 
hunters, gathers, the elderly and traditional doctors to reconstruct the history of settlement 
of the territory, and to explain from their own perspective the importance and use of the 
natural resources that exist.  Part of this knowledge is left in maps and minutes 
(memorias) from the workshops of social mapping.  Most importantly, as expressed by 
some of the Afro-Colombian participants, the young and the old, the men and women 
were put together to synthesize traditional knowledge about the biological resources and 
the community territory as part of their own identity. The communities felt that this 
combined effort was particularly informative and useful.  
 
Participation: 
The agility in delimiting territory, the support for the demographic and technical 
information and the search for accords with other communities and persons as a 
necessary information base for titling was only possible in the cases in which the 
organizations themselves had done the prior work of informing and training the 
community. For instance, thanks to their community work done before the process of 
titling, ACIA not only had a huge knowledge of the communities but a formidable ability 
to call meetings. Thus, for environmental programs that want to secure citizen 
participation there needs to be special support given to strengthening community 
organizations where they already exist, and to push for their formation where they are 
lacking. 
 
Due to community participation and awareness of the program there was a rapid feedback 
mechanism regarding compliance with goals. Indigenous organizations were particularly 
forthright in demanding and pursuing compliance in the demarcation and titling of 
resguardos.  One of the strengths of the Regional Committees is that their agreements set 
both a trend and a benchmark from which to claim rights and compliance on the part of 
the state. In the medium term the Regional Committees highlight participation in 
planning, follow-up and evaluation of the program, looking to harmonize the objectives 
with the rights and interests of the local population.  
 
The process of titling contributed to ethnic identification in a participatory manner, 
community organization and access to clear tenure. Community organizations, but 
especially Afro-Colombian organizations, felt that the process of titling enhanced their 
Page  43
43
cultural cohesion and awareness.  Through this process the communities demarcated and 
reactivated the oral history of their people and territories and built up self-awareness and 
education about their culture.  
 
Territories: 
Titling gave a clear and solid ownership over territory and a legal base effective to 
protect it. In the context of armed conflict the winning of ownership over the land, 
through NRMP, has represented for many communities of the Pacific a real possibility 
for the defense of life and a degree of independence from the conflict. Titling has acted as 
a
base for bargaining and legitimacy. 
 
In spite of the insecurity and upheaval brought about by the violent situation, land titles 
lend a specific long-term stability to communities.  They serve not only to mark the legal 
boundaries of territory today, but to ensure the existence of the communities into the 
future. The collective title not only sets up a legal basis to claim back the territory but it 
specifically registers the social, cultural and political existence of the communities 
associated with the land and the moral obligation of the state to the members. Thus, in a 
less violent future the titles facilitate the return of these people to their territories and 
traditional ways of life. 
 
Productive actions that complement the Land Titling components of the NRMP are 
necessary to ensure the wellbeing of the communities. At present a large percentage of 
the community organizations are working on management plans for their territories. 
Nevertheless the environmental authorities are not taking advantage of this favorable 
occurrence to development initiatives more in accord with the communities to maintain 
and consolidate the commitment and the state needs a clear will to orient actions to 
overcoming poverty. 
 
The efforts to obtain titles and the titling itself have contributed to strengthen the internal 
forms of government and the commun
ity’s negotiating capacity. Nevertheless the 
sustainability of Collective Territories in the
 
future depends on: a) being part of an 
environmental policy, b) the control and use of natural resources, c) the accompaniment 
of productive activities to prevent reversion, d) management plans, and e) the resolution 
of internal conflicts between individual and collective credit and organization. The latter 
is particularly hard as there is no clear policy about credit and each community 
organization has to deal separately with the problem.  
 
The legal status of the collective titles to Indigenous and Black communities affects how 
they operate as territories and how the councils can operate as governing bodies. The 
legal status of titles is not equivalent between Indigenous and Black communities, the 
former having a public status and the latter a private one.  In the Pacific south of San Juan 
settlements are not homogeneous with separate populations occupying clearly defined 
spaces that these disparate statuses of the titles indicate. In effect the legislation blocks 
the creation of joint inter-ethnic territories in spite of the community demand.   
 
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44
The existence of special legislation in independent forms gave rights to Indigenous and 
Black communities over areas that they occupy, but did not resolve complex situations 
where one or other share territories and have managed to develop forms of shared 
understanding and administration. Trying to force the communities into tenure systems 
that do not reflect their social reality can cause conflicts. This is important to recognize 
when using ACIA as a model for future titling. To make spaces for the reality of 
interethnic territories as a tenure modality and reduce conflicts through the incorporation 
of historical pasts of the communities, legislation needs to reflect the actual settlement 
patterns of the two communities. 
 
With the proliferation of municipalities, and territories under the control of extra-
governmental groups, it would seem that the inequality of status between Consejo 
Comunitarios and Cabildos, and their respective territories as administrative units will 
produce new territorial conflicts with other territorial administrative units such as 
municipalities.  The disparity in relations with the central government in the funding of 
the entities, and their ability to collect taxes from their inhabitants compounds the 
problem. A clarifying of legal positioning of these territories in regard to one another, of 
revenue and resource collection and distribution, and of the administrative support from 
local and central government for the functioning of the territories would be needed to 
address this problem. 
 
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45
References: 
External Evaluations prepared by William Villa, Enrique Sanchez Gutierrez and Roque 
Roldán Ortega. 
World Bank Internal Documents 
Documents produced as part of the NRMP (Appendix I) 
 
Other References: 
Constitución Política de Colombia, 
Emfasar
 Santa Fé de Bogotá 1991. 
 
Barnes, John “Driving Roads through Land Rights: The Colombian Plan Pacífico” 
The 
Ecologist
 Vol 23 No 4 1993.  
 
Cifuentes, Alexander, Mauricio Adarve, y  Jairo Velásquez, Viva la Ciudadanía, 
Corporación S.O.S. Colombia 
La Nueva Constitución y la Territorialidad en el 
Pacifico Colombiano
 Cali 1993. 
 
Instituto Colombiano de Cultura, Instituto Colo
mbiano de Antropología, Cifuentes, 
Alexander 
Seminario Internacional sobre: La Participación del Negro en la 
Formación de las Sociedades Latinoamericanas
,
1986.
Roldán Ortega, Roque 
Indigenous Peoples of Colombia and the Law: A critical 
Approach to the Study of Past and Present Situations
,
Tercer Mundo Editores, 
2000. 
 
List of contacts 
 
World Bank 
Jairo Arboleda (Social Development Specialist, LCSEO) 
Shelton Davis (Sector Lead Specialist Social Development, LCSEO) 
Elsie Garfield (Senior Agricultural Economist, LCSER) 
Phil Hazelton (Senior Natural Resources Management Specialist, LCSEN) 
Richard Huber (Environment Specialist Consultant, LCSEN) 
Virginia Lambert (Consultant LCSER) 
Isabel Lavadenz (Senior Land Resources Specialist LCSES) 
 
In Colombia 
Fabio Arjona Hincapie (Vice Minister of Policy, Ministry of the Environment, 1997-98) 
Maria Victoria Cifuentes (General Coordinator, PCU, Ministry of the Environment) 
Silvio Gracés (Chief of the Program Attending Black Communities, INCORA) 
Diomenes Londoño (Secretary of Technical Affairs, PCU, Ministry of the Environment) 
Page  46
46
Dario Prieto (Consultant for Program Attending Indigenous Communities, INCORA) 
Leonardo Reina (Technical Affairs Division, Ministry of the Environment) 
Carlos Rua (Consultant for Program Attending Black Communities, INCORA) 
Giovanni Salazar (Regional Assessor for Regional Committees, Red de Solidaridad) 
Enrique Sanchez (External Evaluator, CECOIN) 
 
Page  47
47
 
Appendix I: Documents produced as part of the NRMP 
 
El Atrateño: Boletín de la Asociación Campesina integral del Atrato, ACIA
,
“La Ley 70 y 
el Desarrollo,” 1995. 
ACIA 
La Titulación Colectiva, Una Opción por la Vida de las Comunidades Negras del 
Medio Atrato
 Quibdó, 1996. 
ACIA, Asociación Campesina Integral del Atrato, Instituto Geográfico Agustin Codazzi, 
Red de Solidaridad Social, Ministerio del Medio Ambiente 
Memorias de Taller de 
Percepción Territorial Como Acompañamiento a la Propuesta de Titulación 
Colectiva
,
1996. 
ACIA, Asociación Campesina Integral del Atrato 
La Titulación Colectiva, Una Opción 
por la Vida de las Comunidades Negras del Medio Atrato
 1996.
CVC-
Corporación Autónoma Regional del Cauca, Centro de Cooperación al Indígena 
CECOIN 
Plan de Desarrollo Para las Comunidades Indígenas de la Costa 
Pacífica: Diagnostico
 1988. 
 
Departamento Nacional 
de
Planeación 
Programa BID-
Plan Pacífico: Bases para Forjar 
el Desarrollo Humano Sostenible en el Pacífico
,
1997.
ECOLOGICA: Política-Medio Ambiente-Cultura 
Proyecto Biopacífico “Sabemos Más 
de la Luna que del Chocó”,
 1993.
Esteros
 “Comunidades Negras: Territorio y Desarrollo” Edición Especial 1996. 
Esteros
,
Separata, Proyecto Biopacífico “Ley de Comunidades Negras.” 
 
Fundación Natura, ECOFONDO, Instituto Colombiano de Antropología, Juana Camacho 
y
Eduardo Restrepo, 
De Montes, Ríos y Ciudades: Territorios e Identidades de la 
Gente Negra en Colombia
.
Instituto Colombiano de Antropología ICAN con la Organización OBAPO (Organización 
de Barrios Populares del Choco) 
Construcción Territorial en el Choco: Historias 
Regionales Volumen I
,
Patricia Vargas Sarmiento, 1999. 
Instituto Colombiano de Antropología ICAN con la Organización OBAPO (Organización 
de Barrios Populares del Choco), Patricia Vargas Sarmiento
 Construcción 
Territorial en el Chocó Volumen II Historias Regionales
,
1999.
Instituto Colombiano de la Re
forma Agraria INCORA, Programa de Atención a 
Comunidades Indígenas, Ministerio del medio Ambiente 
Resguardos Indígenas
,
1998. 
Instituto Colombiano de la Reforma Agraria INCORA, Silvio Gracés Mosquera 
Tierras 
de las Comunidades Negras II: Manual de procedim
ientos para el trámite de las 
solicitudes de titulación colectiva de las “Tierras de las Comunidades Negras” 
en el marco de la ley 70 de 1993 y el Decreto 1745 de 1995,
 ,
1999.
Page  48
48
 
Ministerio del Interior 
Actualización: Decretos para Comunidades negras Expedidos a 
31 de diciembre de 1996
,
1996.
Ministerio del Interior, Dirección de Asuntos para las Comunidades Negras, Comisión. 
Consultiva de Alto Nivel, Secretaría Técnica, Proyecto Biopacífico, Ministerio 
del Medio Ambiente, Departamento Nacional de Planeación 
“Es el Tiempo de la 
Gente Afrocolombiana” Derechos de las Comunidades Negras de Colombia: 
compendio legislativo sobres la población afrocolombiana, 
Santa Fé de Bogotá, 
1996. 
Ministerio del Interior, Asuntos Indígenas, Departamento Nacional de Planeación, 
Programa de Apoyo y Fortalecimiento Étnico de los Pueblos Indígenas de 
Colombia 1995-1998
,
1996. 
 
Organización Regional Embera Wounaan , OREWA 
Estudio de Ordenamiento Ambienta 
y
Territorial Para los Pueblos Indígenas del Departamento del Choco
,
Quibdó 
1998. 
 
Plan Nacional de Rehabilitación 
Memorias: Seminario Ley 70 de 1993 y Políticas 
Nacionales Para el Pacifico Colombiano
 1993.
Red de Solidaridad Social 
Tierras de Comunidades Negras: Procedimiento para solicitar 
el Título de Propiedad Colectiva de las “Tierras de Comunidades Negras”
 1996. 
Red de Solidaridad Social, Ministerio del Medio Ambiente, y Proyecto Biopacífico, 
El 
Hilero: Separate Especial
,
1996.
Red de Solidaridad 
1
Comité Regional Interétnico: Documentos de Trabajo, Comités 
Regionales PMRN
 1997.
Red de Solidaridad 
Gentes de Río y Montaña: Legislación Territorial, Ambiental y de 
Participacion de los Pueblos Indígenas
,
Miguel A Vásques L 1997. 
Red de Solidaridad 
Memorias: “1 Comité Regional Interétnico del Pacífico 
Colombiano” Puerto Tejada, Comités Regionales PMRN
 1997.
Red de Solidaridad, Ministerio del Medio Ambiente 
ACTAS: Proceso de Titulación 
Colectiva de Tierras de Comunidades Negras, Comités Regionales PMRN
,
1996-
1998. 
Red de Solidaridad Social, Ministerio del Medio Ambiente, y Proyecto Biop
acífico 
Territorios Indígenas: Acuerdos entre los Pueblos Indígenas del pacífico y el 
Estado para la Realización de sus Derechos Territoriales
,
1998.
Roque Roldán Ortega 
Proyectos de Protección del Medio Ambiente y Reforestación en la 
Región del Pacifico Colombiano
 1992.
Page  49
49
Appendix II:  Outline of the Chronology of World Bank Involvement 
 
1851 Abolition of slavery.  
Since the abolition of slavery Afro-Colombian populations 
did not have a single legal instrument from which to make territorial or self governing 
claims. Until 1991 there had been no legislative or constitutional acts or laws relating to 
the rights of  Black populations, neither to prevent or correct discriminatory treatment nor 
to compensate in some manner the enormous inequality left by slavery over 350 years. 
 
1890 Law 89 Cabildo Law
.
Colombian law has always recognized Indigenous peoples 
as culturally distinct and legally distinct societies within the greater national society, and 
as such holders of fundamental rights.  One of these special rights was the right to 
property in the form of a resguardo.  The resguardo as an institution granted the 
community complete rights of property over their lands, within a marked jurisdiction, 
free from civil ordinances.   Thus, the colonial institutions of the resguardo and the 
cabildo provide a basis for claims to territory and self-governance.  
Law 89 of 1890 grants Indigenous people entitlement to set up their own forms of 
internal government, through the election of Cabildos or Indigenous Councils, bodies 
composed of several members of the respective community that take on the internal 
administration of the group, particularly with regard to the distribution and administration 
of communal lands and the carrying out of minor policing measures to keep internal 
order.   
 
Cabildos were recognized by the state as public entities of a special character, 
incorporated into the country’s political and administrative structure.  As government 
bodies responding to communities, they have two main functions: governing the 
community and participating on their behalf in activities outside the community’s normal 
life, but relating to the defense of the group’s interest. 
 
1957 Convention 107 of International Labor Organization (ILO)
.
Convention 107 of 
ILO helped to convert usufruct rights for Indigenous people in “reservas territoriales” to 
full territorial ownership (dominio) in the collective form for perpetuity.  Nevertheless 
Convention 107 was openly integrationist in spirit which proved a stumbling block as an 
adequate legal base to address Indigenous issues. 
 
1959 Law 2a
.
The government recognizes the traditional lands of Indigenous populations 
but sanctions the entire Chocó region as Forest Reserve and thus limits land ownership by 
Blacks whose insecurity of tenure led to conflict with Indigenous communities. 
 
1960s
 large forest concession given on coast, naval base and Santa Cecilla-Nuqui-Bahia 
Solano road.  Pan-American highway. 
 
1961 Law 135 of Agrarian Reform (Ley Agraria)
 The agrarian laws recognize the full 
rights of Indigenous communities and people to property over their traditionally occupied 
lands. The late 1960s INCORA implemented this law titling 73 resguardos of 1 million 
hectares.  The law did not mention Afro-Colombians.  Using the few provisions in the 
Agrarian Law that related to Indigenous people, sectors of the Indigenous population who 
were engaged in menial or servile forms of work on haciendas and estates in the 
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50
department of Cauca, launched a vigorous movement aimed at claiming back the lands 
they had lost or at widening their vital spaces, if they had any. 
 
1966 Indigenous Lands Program.
 INCORA initiated a program of Indigenous Lands 
and constructed, among others, the Indigenous reserve of Caimán Nuevo in favor of the 
Tule. 
 
1967 Law 31
 by which ILO Convention 107 of 1957 on the “protection and integration 
of Indigenous and tribal populations in independent countries” was ratified and 
incorporated into national law.  
 
1968
 the program of legal recognition of Indigenous communities’ lands in forests and 
plains started in 1968 a year after the adoption of Convention 107. Also a large number 
of the regulations which established the 300 or more resguardos granted to the 
communities as their property between 1968 and the adoption of Convention 169 were 
based on article 11 of the Convention. 
 
1970s INCORA
 began to title and identify Indian reserves. In the 180s there was large 
areas given in resguardos creating uncertainty among Afro-Colombians. 
 
1974 
Union de Indigenas Chocanos
 (UNIDICH), UNIDICH set up by Church in Bajo 
San Juan river area 
 
1979 OREWA
 (Organizacion Regional Embera Waunana) originally a student 
organization in Quibdó with missionary direction, was probably the first expression of 
popular organizing in the Pacific with ethnic characteristics.  It brought forth fundamental 
themes of land, cultural respect as an identity base, autonomous self-government and the 
capacity to define and orient their own development options for the Embera and the 
Waunana Indigenous peoples.    
 
1980
 almost all Indigenous Reserves were declared Resguardos.   
 
1982 1
st
 
National Indigenous Congress
 in Bogota and 
1
st
 regional OREWA congress 
1982 Creation of ONIC (Organización nacional Indígena de Colombia) 
whose 
fundamental idea is to fight for unity, land, culture and autonomy. 
1983 2
nd
 Congress 
1986 3
rd
 Congress
 Led to state concertation by late 1980s resulting from the expansion 
of extractive activities (mining and timber) and inter-ethnic tensions with Afro-
Colombians. (Espera Indigenous people in Bocas de Saturga (Cauca) were killed in a 
dispute between Indigenous and Afro-Colombian peasants over mineral resources. 
Burning of Afro-Colombian houses by Indigenous people in Medio Atrato).   
 
1986 ACIA -
Integral Peasant Association of the Middle Atrato
 
(Asociación Campesina 
Integral del Medio Atrato).  Born in 1986 and comprised of 3,500 members, ACIA is the 
first and best organized Afro-Colombian community based organization to come up with 
an integrated solution to the problem of the legalization of land. They were instrumental 
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51
in structuring the demand for collective rather than individual titles. It came into being in 
opposition to two land and timber concessions in the Middle Atrato and was formed 
through small neighborhood associations working to attain basic necessities called 
“grupos de base” within the communities of the Atrato assisted by a group of 
missionaries from the Dioceses of Quibdó.  
 
1987 Quibdó Civic Strike (Paro Civico de Quibdó) May
.
This occasion was organized 
by a civil movement that planted, for the first time, the demand for titling of land in 
general but in the form of individual titles. A month later 
ACIA
 organized a meeting that 
brought up the idea of Collective Titles.  
 
1985-1989 Tropical Action Plan strategy proposal.
 The 1986 Accord between 
Government of Colombia, the Netherlands, and FAO was to develop the 1985 Tropical 
Action Plan which was an FAO project to stop the destruction of tropical forests.  The 
accord led to a 1987 survey and regional consultation run through the National 
Department of Planning (DNP) which examined 300 local initiatives and approved 70 to 
be part of the body of the basic plan. The negotiation process finished in 1989 and the 
strategy proposal was later translated into the Forest Action Plan for Colombia which 
formed the precursor of the Natural Resource Management Program (NRMP).  
 
1988 Acuerdo 20 of CODECHOCO.
 
Building on demands from community 
organization for collective titles to land spearheaded by 
ACIA
,
the regional autonomous 
organization CODECHOCO awarded ACIA
 
(Asociación Campesina Integral del Atrato), 
800,000 hectares in an unofficial agreement which, although was not legally binding 
became a district model.  
 
1989 June Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization (ILO) 
labeled 
resguardo lands as inalienable, unmorgageable, non-seizable and inprecsciptible inspired 
by the new idea of a territory as a space of life for a people. This guaranteed the 
participation of Indigenous people in running the affairs within their territories. Colombia 
was a signatory to the convention and instrumental in its formation. The Convention and 
the new constitution were in agreement on a lot of stipulations. Some of these rights of 
Indigenous people include the right to: 
-
to preserve their integrity and that of their physical and cultural heritage  
-
to improve their conditions of life and to receive support for this purpose 
-
to participate and decide upon their own future 
-
to the cooperation of the state for the protection of their lives, their cultures and the 
environment of the territories that they inhabit 
-
to preserve and have due regard for their institutions, traditions and legal and social 
customs 
-
to demand and see justice done in connection with their rights 
-
to land and natural resources 
-
to health and social security 
-
to an education which is suited to their requirements and in keeping with their culture  
-
to know their rights and see that their rights are known and respected by other members 
of the national society 
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52
-
to communicate and cooperate among Indigenous peoples of frontier areas 
The Convention rejects all acts which could violate the fundamental rights and 
freedoms of Indigenous peoples. Rights of citizenship of Indigenous peoples shall be 
recognized without restriction, and their enjoyment of special privileges belonging to 
them as Indigenous peoples shall not constitute an obstacle to their exercising of the 
rights granted to all citizens.   
 
1989 
–1991 preparation of loan for NRMP.
 
From August 1989 until December 1991 
the government of Colombia was preparing the proposal for a loan for the NRMP. 
 
1990 ACIA and Land Rights, Quibdó, June.
 
ACIA continued efforts to broaden its 
support base and the technical and juridical substantiation of its demands. This ended in 
the “Meeting in Defense of Our Traditional Territory of the Pacific” (Encuentro por la 
Defensa de Nuestro Territorio Tradicional del Pacifico) where they claimed their rights to 
territory as a minority ethnic group to secure a full life, as part of patrimony they have 
gotten historically and as fruit of labor, and as a responsibility of State duty that must be 
fulfilled with the Collective Titling of the space.  
 
1990 National Constitutive Assembly and Afro-Colombians.
 Because of the incipient 
degree of development of these organizations, Black community organizations were not 
able to put forth a representative in the National Constituent Assembly at the end of 1990. 
The Indigenous organizations were able to put forth two different representatives. 
Working with OREWA Black Community organizations, including ACIA,  formed a 
Working Table that put a lot of effort into the dispersal of and lobbying for proposals and 
mobilization and pressure in support of their demands that were presented by Indigenous 
constituents or the few sympathetic independents.  
 
Only groups from Buenaventura influenced by the Bishop Gerardo Valencia 
Cano, tried to put up a representative to the National Constitutive Assembly.  The 
frustration of this process did not stop a young group of Afro-Colombians, 
el 
Movimie
nto Nacional Cimarrón
 which later became a national movement, from 
presenting a proposal that through the constituents was put into the constitution.  It 
proposed that:  
1)“the Colombian nation is pluri-ethnic and pluri-cultural”,  
2) they must “prohibit racism and all discrimination against Black and Indigenous 
communities”,  
3) they must “order the state to help zones inhabited by Black and Indigenous 
communities to accelerate their economic, social, cultural and political 
development,  
4) they must “ recognize the ancestral right to property and use that Black and 
Indigenous communities have acquired over the land they occupy,  
5) and “determine a structure of national planning that promotes equality between 
the regions and eliminates the internal colonialism practices by more developed 
regions over the more marginal ones.”   
 
1991
 
Law 21 Ratification of ILO Convention 169.
 Colombia ratifies ILO Convention 
169 four months before adopting the new Constitution.  From the papers presented by the 
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53
Indigenous members to the Constituent Assembly and from debates stirred by them, it 
became obvious that Convention 169’s rules concerning land, government autonomy, 
respect for Indigenous peoples’ culture and for their right to participate, health and 
education services adapted to their culture, respect for the Indigenous languages, so on 
and so forth, did guide formulations and made decisions easier.  
 
1991 New Nation Constitution
.
Voted in by the National Constitutive Assembly the 
new Colombian constitution defines Colombia as a pluri-ethnic and multi-cultural nation 
thus protecting ethnic and cultural diversity (articles 7 and 70). It recognizes for the first 
time ethnic groups and their rights including the right to collective territory. It upholds 
the Indigenous political organization (cabildo) as a recognized body of landholders.  It 
also strengthens the autonomy of self forms of government and the protection of 
communal lands and unified and associative forms of property (articles 58, 63, 286, 287, 
288, 330 and transitory article 55).  It obliges a participatory form of government and 
provides for the protection of natural resources (articles 8, 80, 81, 82, 330-5).   
The following articles have special relevance to Indigenous and Afro-Colombian 
populations: 
·
The right of communities to conserve their integrity and the physical and cultural 
patrimony  (articles 2, 7, 10, 58, 63, 72, 79, 248,  and transitory 55). 
·
Right of communities to improve their standard of living and to receive help in 
attaining this (articles 64, 330 and transitory 55) 
·
Right of communities to participate in public affairs, those that concern them 
directly or indirectly and especially in deciding their own future (articles 1, 2, 40, 
41, 49, 286, 287, 329, 330, and transitory 55) 
·
Right of communities to the cooperation of the state in the protection of their life, 
culture and environment of their territories (articles 79, 330, and transitory 55). 
·
Right of communities to conserve and have respected their judicial and social 
institutions, traditions and customs. (article 7, 8, 70, 246, 330,  and transitory 55) 
·
Right of communities to demand and obtain justice and satisfaction of their rights 
(articles 29, 86, 94, 229, 246, 282 etc). 
·
Right of communities to land and natural resources (articles 63, 286, 329, 330,  and 
transitory 55) 
·
Right of communities to health and social security (article 44, 48, 49, 50, 64, and 
366) 
·
Right of communities to an education adequate to their requirements and according 
to their culture (articles 67, 68, 69, and 70) 
·
Right of communities to know their rights and have them known and respected by 
the rest of national society. 
 
1991 Indigenous People and the Constitution
.
The 1991 constitution confers upon the 
Indigenous territories the status of political and administrative institutions.  This legal 
concept formally gives the Indigenous communities a high degree of administrative and 
fiscal autonomy to conduct their internal affairs and their relations with other public and 
private bodies.  As a political and administrative entity integrated into the new 
constitutional system, an Indigenous territory can be governed by Indigenous authorities 
and a taxable base can be established for the members of the community.  In addition, 
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54
each Indigenous territory has a share in the distribution of national income. Can 
administer its own resources and provide public services, or at least some of those that 
are provided by territorial entities, such as education, health, basic sanitation, and can 
undertake engineering projects beneficial to the community etc.  
Article 357 establishes the “Indigenous resguardo share in the nation’s current 
income,” thus all Indigenous communities who occupy a resguardo have the right to 
receive every year form the central government an amount of money proportional to the 
number of inhabitants, to cover administration expenses, provision of basic services and 
development programs.  
 
1991 Transitory Article 55
 paves the way for the Afro-Colombians to have communal 
ownership of the lands that they have traditionally occupied (in this case the rural riparian 
zones in the rivers of the Chocó Region).  An inter-ministerial commission to review the 
rights of the Afro-Colombian populations was established in 1992.  In case the 
Commission and the Congress should fail to produce the law required by the constitution 
by the mid 1993, the government will decree on this matter within the following six 
months.  
 
1992 The First World Bank Mission
.
The loan processing on the part of the World 
Bank went form January 1992 to October 1993.  It was prepared by the government of 
Colombia, FAO-World Bank cooperative program under the Tropical Forestry Action 
Plan. 
 
1992 Inter-Ministerial Agreement between Ministry of Government, INDERENA 
and INCORA
 in order to review land use activities within resgurados situated within 
protected areas to ensure that they were used sustainably.  
 
1992 Sept 25 Letter from Roldán
 out
lining the conditions of land and land tenure in the 
Choco.  “If both Indigenous people and Afro-Colombians are considered to have 
ancestral rights to land, then 95% of the inhabitants of the Chocó Region deserve land 
titles based on historic occupation in order to assure the tranquil ownership of these areas. 
While the Afro-Colombians as a group  have not yet been awarded land titles, in areas 
where they have traditionally logged or inhabited the riverbanks. They have self-defined 
ownership rights, and rarely if ever, has this land been taken from them.  Some have 
bothered to get home made cadastres (declaraciones extrajuicio), stamped at notary 
publics and the like, but these have no legal foundation.” 
Land conflicts preexisted, especially bad in the Cauca and Nariño however, two 
organization in the Chocó, the ACIA and OREWA have had conflict resolution meetings 
that have successfully resolved the problems and resulted in increased government 
services in health and education. 
 
1992 Participation Review Meeting in Yanaconas
,
October
,
At this meeting the World 
Bank circulated the proposed plan for the NRMP to 62 representatives of local 
communities, NGOs and government agencies with the objective of:  
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55
1) arranging a forum whereby the design could be debated and prosper from the informed 
participation of the affected communities in determination of the development objectives 
and project components,  
2) incorporating the recommendations made during the workshop into the appraisal of the 
NRMP and  
3) ensuring an integrated community based approach to management and rational use of 
renewable resources  and protected areas is forthcoming in all components.  
The government of Colombia accepted the idea because the new political mandate 
laid out in the 1991 constitution recognized and emphasized participation and the 
territorial rights of ethnic groups. Additionally, the old PAFC was not liked by anyone, 
not the government, nor the Bank, nor the people.  It was considered too 1970s in its 
emphasis on the amount of vigilance over the forests by the state. 
The workshop was attended by the institutions of national government, 
representatives of all the Regional Autonomous Corporations, 28 community based 
groups, NGOs, the High -Level Consultancy Commission, the highest organ of the 
accord and agreement of the Afro-Colombian community sector, and the institutions of 
the national government responsible for developing territorial programs for Afro-
Colombian communities in the Pacific Coast. 
Although the original terms of reference for setting up the workshop did not 
mention Black community territory, (while mentioning other land tenure issues such as 
Indigenous resguardos), titling of Black community land was an essential factor 
introduced through the process of participation. Representatives of Black and Indigenous 
organizations and communities helped reorient the institutional strategy to include the 
preservation of cultural and ethnic identity, the recognition and granting of community 
territorial rights and the collective use of natural resources by the local communities, as 
the bases for the sustainable development of the region. 
As a result of the workshop the National Planning Authority (DNP) agreed to 
guarantee the articulation of Transitory Article 55 that gives Afro-Colombians collective 
rights to territory which later led to the creation of Law 70 in 1993.  From this meeting a 
sub-program name
d
“Policy and Strategic Development” formed from the following 
components: forest policy, Black community land titling, constitution and demarcation of 
Indigenous resguardos, ecological zoning, environmental monitoring and Regional 
Committees.  The Regional Committees were to guarantee community participation in 
the planning, execution and follow up of the NRMP. 
 
1993 Law of Territorial Regularization
 (ley de Ordenamiento Territorial, outlined in 
article 286 of the constitution and decree 436 of Consejo Nacional de Politica 
Indigenista). It outlines the land tenure process of implementing Agrarian reform law and 
granting titles to resguardos. According to these laws, lands may be grouped into four 
categories: departments, districts, municipalities, and Indigenous territories.  Indigenous 
reserves and territories may be groups into Indigenous Territorial entities (ETI).  
 
1993 Law 
70,
 
August
.This law sets into motion transitory article 55 of the constitution 
recognizing the cultural and territorial rights of the Afro-Colombian population of the 
Pacific Basin specifically the recognition of collective territories for Black communities.  
The financial readiness and impluse to support the writing of this law on the part of the 
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56
World Bank helped forge it into being. Law 70 commissions the following institutions to 
carry out the law: 
Ministry of the Interior 
 
Ministry of  Environment 
 
INCORA  or Colombian Institute for Agrarian Reform  
 
IGAC or the Agustin Cordazzi Geographic Institute  
 
Plan Pacífico 
Red de Solidaridad Social 
High-Level Consultation Committee. (Comite Consultiva de Alto Nivel) 
Regional Autonomous Corporations 
Local and regional organizations 
 
Following from the Yanaconas meeting the National Planning Authority (DNP) agreed to 
guarantee the articulation of Transitory Article 55 that gives Afro-Colombians collective 
rights to territory which came about in the form of Law 70 in August 1993. This law 
recognizes Afro-Colombian populations as ethnic groups and recognizes their territorial 
rights in the Pacific Basin, in the form of collective territories. In conjunction with decree 
1745 of 1995, Law 70 
stipulates how ethnic claims must be put forward, legal territorial 
recognition and what constitutes an Afro-Colombian ethnic group.
 
The NRMP made concrete the titling of Black property.  While the constitution 
gave the recognition to the territory, the financial readiness and impulse to support the 
writing of this law on the part of the World Bank helped forge it into being.  
Law 70 defines Black communities to be based on ideas of ethnicity, which are 
framed with four criteria in mind; culture, history, occupation and location. 
Law 70 
grants a form of self-government in the “consejo comunitarios de comunidades negras” 
or Community Councils for Black communities. Nevertheless, the consejo comunitarios 
are formed in a confused legal conception and are the legal personification of the 
community and are thus constituted as entities with a purely private character. This 
private, not public character is granted by Law 70. Taken in this way, the consejo 
comunitarios are a clear disadvantage in comparison to the Indigenous Cabildos and the 
administrative councils of the future Indigenous Territorial Entities, which are clearly 
invested with attributions that are deeply buried in carrying out public functions.   
 
1993 Quibdo Meeting between Government of Colombia and OREWA
.
This 
meeting was to view project sites and get feedback from the community representatives 
regarding NRMP. 
 
1993 Law 99 Environmental law
 set up the National Environmental System (SINA), the 
Ministry of Environment (MOE) and Regional Autonomous Corporations. Until Law 99, 
INDERENA was in charge of environmental affairs. The law promotes the integration of 
Indigenous and Black communities that traditionally inhabited the region in the process 
of conservation and the cooperation of the international community in compensating the 
efforts of local communities to defend their unique ecosystems. 
 
1993 World Bank Appraisal Mission and Debate negotiations 
in April and October 
respectively producing recommendations: 
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57
Proposed NRMP requires complex policy actions, which are relatively new to 
Colombia.  Included for example, are actions needed to: 1) improve the institutional and 
regulatory framework in natural resource management; 2) develop a sound forest 
concessions and royalties system; 3) clarify land rights, in particular for the Afro-
Colombian populations in the Chocó; 4) involve Indigenous and Afro-Colombian 
communities in project planning, implementation and environmental monitoring 5) 
support investments made by communities for the rehabilitation of vital watersheds on a 
matching grant basis and 6) improve the management of parks. 
Benefits
:
1)
enhanced volume, quality and stability of water supplies for domestic use, 
irrigation and hydro. 2) reduced soil erosion, 3) reduction of environmental damages 
achieved through improved monitoring and control, 4) more employment in the highlands 
and 5) conservation of biodiversity, and carbon sequestration. 
Risks
:
1)fluid institutional situation, 2) evolving legal framework, 3) process of 
decentralization of govt. responsibilities, 4) possible continuation of existing, 
unsatisfactory system of forest concession, 5) the need for cooperation by affected 
populations, 6)unpredictable security situation in Colombia. 
1993 Proposed NRMP Loan from World Bank of US$ 39 million 
with a maturity of 
17 years including 4 years of grace.  
1994 Ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity.  
1994 National Environment Plan 
1994 Decree 1371 High-Level Consultative Commission June 30
 was created to 
address issues of Black Communities. 
 
1994 Approval of  NRMP loan 3692 from World Bank, August 9
.
The NRMP 
retained 3 objectives 1) stop the process of degrading natural resources, 2) to promote 
and improve the sustainable management and use of natural resources, 3) strengthen the 
capacity of the environmental, institutional and community management. 
An ambitious program was set up with four components consisting of 1) Forest 
Policy and Strategic Development, 2) rehabilitation of watershed, 3) national parks, and 
4) an education, capacity building, research and administration program.  However, in the 
first phase of the program, not even the subgroups had any action oriented to resolve the 
territorial demands of Indigenous and Afro- Colombians of the Pacific. It was not 
announced how they were going to obtain and maintain the participation of the 
communities for obtaining their goals, nor did it commit to anything in the sub-programs.  
What is more there was no part that assigned the legalization of communal land.  That is 
to say the recognition  of fundamental rights of the native people did not transpire in any 
part of the strategic definition. 
Since 1994 Bank funds have been used to contract afro-Colombian organizations to 
inform rural peoples about these new laws, as well as to set the groundwork for the 
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58
granting of collective titles. The following expenditure and goals were set forth for the 
titling and regional committees components of the NRMP. 
1) Titling and Demarcation of Resguardos lending at $0.5 m /5 years (0.8% of total loan) 
40 new resguardos 
123 resguardos demarcated 
2) Titling of Black Community Land  2.0m /2 years (3% of total loan) 
3) Regional Committees 1.3m (2% of total loan) 
4) total financing of 3 components 5.8% of total loan 
 
1994 Law 312 Citizen Participation
.
This law outlines popular participation in political 
life as a right. The new constitution constructed a new model of national society defining 
the participation of civil society in the management of public affairs as supremely 
important.  By law the participation of communities in the management and decision 
making about things that affect their economic, social, political, administrative and 
cultural life is required and specifically granted to minority communities.  
Objectives of participation: 1) to assure the complete dominion and tranquil 
presence over the territory and the intangibility of this in the long run, 2) to assure the 
protection of cultural patrimony of ethnic groups and the full respect of their identity, 3) 
to obtain an acceptable level of autonomy  for the management of their internal affairs 
and to define their own models of development and their own strategies of improvement, 
4) to contribute to the strengthening, in the country, in an increasing and sustainable 
manner, the climate of tolerance and respect for ethnic and cultural diversity, 5) to assure 
their increased decision making power in the management of public affairs, 6) to consent 
in a progressive and sustainable manner to the enjoyment of basic services especially 
health and education, as well as the ownership (dominio) of new technology that with 
subjection to the environmental conditions which puts them in their proper place, permits 
them to made adequate improvements to their resources and to improve their living 
conditions. 
 
1994 Law 160 New Law of Agrarian Reform.
 
Law 160 was inspired by the 
constitutional view that it is the duty of the state to provide progressive access to landed 
property for agrarian workers and other rural public workers with the aim of improving 
the income and quality of life of the rural population.  Additionally this law grants 
Indigenous peoples complete rights to property over traditionally occupied areas.  
Implementing Law 160, decree 2164 of 1995 consolidates the process of 
constituting a resguardo. It says that INCORA must make studies of the land necessities 
of Indigenous communities, to give and title sufficient and additional land adequate to 
their assets and development, recognizing the property they traditionally occupied, the 
preservation of the ethnic group and the improvement of the standard of living of its 
members, without jeopardizing or infringing on the rights of Black communities detailed 
in law 70 of 1993. 
Nevertheless, Article 85
 
of
law 160 states that INCORA and the MOE, in concert 
with the community institutions, have to verify and certify that the communities comply 
with the social and ecological (respectively) functions of the property with out specifying 
the parameters by which this can be done.  Thus, territory traditionally used by 
Indigenous nomads, semi nomads and agriculturists who survive on hunting, relocation 
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59
and horticulture that are situated in Forest Reserves, can be designated as an Indigenous 
resguardos but its occupation and use still fall under the provisions established by the 
MOE and their rules on renewable natural resources.  
 
1994 MOE Assigns the RED to administer Regional Committees, Dec
.
The Red de 
Solidaridad Social with the national department of Planning contracted to support the 
organizational process of local communities, institutional development, and to facilitate 
training, access and operation of the communities organizations to guarantee their 
participation instances of planning execution and follow-up of the NRMP. 
 
1995 Technical Commission 
was installed in January and the members named in 
November. 
 
1995 Decree 1745 and the start of NRMP in the Pacific, October  
From June 1994 
–
Dec 1995 (18months)  the activities of the components focused on 
establishing the legal and institutional conditions for implementing the Indigenous 
resguardo and Black community land titling processes.  Soon after the Loan 
Effectiveness, a High –Level Commission and affiliated departmental commissions were 
established to carry out consultations for the regularization of law 70.  The work of this 
commission, much of it financed under the Regional Committees component of the 
NRMP, resulted in Decree 1745 of 12 October 1995.  This decree set out the procedures 
that make the titling of Afro-Colombian land possible.   
Decree 1745 regulates chapter III of law 70/93 and defines rules and procedures for 
collective titling. It defines collective titling as fundamental to:  
1) human rights,  
2) cultural survival,  
3) socio-economic development, and  
4) natural resource protection and management.  
It was supported by the idea that the basic success of titling can be measured as the level 
of participation of the community and organizational strengthening. The process should 
produce synergy, social capital and inter-institutional coordination. 
Participation highlighted that more work was needed in two areas: 1) strengthening 
of communities and their organizations so they can take up the knowledge and 
responsibility of having territorial ownership and domination. This meant legal training, 
construction and consolidation of consejos comunitarios, regularization of management 
of natural resources, and definition and agreement on the boundaries of communities. 2) 
necessary accompaniment training and capacity building of the entity in charge of the 
procedures (INCORA). 
 
Formal structure of the Titling process 
A
Technical Committee(Comite Technica) to authorize and license.   
A
High-Level Consultation Commission to guide the procedure  
Regional and departmental consultative committees 
Consejo Comunitarios (or community councils) 
The consejo comunitario which operate on the local level facilitate:  
1)  Jurisdiction and respectability,  
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60
2)  Capacity building,  
3)  Sensibility of legal norms, and  
4)  Organizational strengthening in procedures assistance and collecting of 
information. 
 
Territoriality, Ancestrality, Ethnic Identity for Afro-Colombians 
Within the NRMP and Decree 1745 collective titling is considered basic to: 
1) environment protection 
2) territorial ordering 
3)  sustainable production and development 
4)  identity, autonomy and participation 
 
1995 Decree 2164 of December 7
 consolidated, along with law 160 of 1994, from at 
least the legal point of view, the process of constituting a resguardo. It says that INCORA 
must make studies of land necessities of Indigenous communities, to give and title 
sufficient and additional land to facilitate the adequate their assets and development, the 
recognition of the property they traditionally occupied, or constitute their habitat, the 
preservation of the ethnic group and the improvement of the standard of living of the 
members, without jeopardizing or infringing on the rights of Black communities detailed 
in law 70 of 1993.  Article 2 outlines what is understood by Indigenous Territory, 
community, Indigenous “parcialidad”, Indigenous reserve, Indigenous Cabildo and 
traditional authority.  It outlines a lot of work to be undertaken by the MOE which the  
Bank felt the communities could do. 
 
1995 General Outline of Participation
 (Lineamientos Generales de Participación).  
Commitment by CONPES , the National Council for Economic and Social Policy, 
(Consejo Nacional de Politica Economica y Social), to offer the conditions necessary for 
participation of civil society. 
 
1995 CONPES 
document “Salto Social” called for 1.2 m hectares for Afro-Colombians 
which the national development plan incorporated. 
 
1995 MOE contracts INCORA to administer Land Titling components, Nov.
 
In the 
inter-administrative convention no 045 for the execution, supervision, finance and 
evaluation of the subprogram A: “Development Policy and Strategy of Renewable 
Natural Resources in the Choco biogeographic of the NRMP” with reference to the 
components A.2.C: “Demarcation and Constitution of Indigenous Resguardos” and 
A.2.D: “Collective Land Titling for Black Communities”. PCU signed INCORA to 
support the programs of social regularization of property understanding that the titling of 
Black and Indigenous community territories is an essential contribution to regional 
development. In 1996 INCORA went into another agreement with the department of 
Antioquia to move ahead with the titling of resguardos in that department. They had also 
made such an agreement with CORPONARIÑO. INCORA has titled 127 resguardos 
between 1979 and 1995. 
 
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61
Process: Titling 
1) diagnostic (INCORA) 
2)  training and constitution of consejos comunitarios 
a)  regulation of environment norms in law 70 
 
b)  conservation of Natural Resources use 
c)  Ancestral knowledges and genetic resources  
d)  land use and environment planning in Black community territories 
e)  address the problem of population in parks and marine and coastal zones 
f) 
consultation and participation of communities in environment management 
and decision-making. 
g)  social and productive development strategy. 
3)  training for titling and pilot experiences 
4)  strengthening of national and regional institutions (INCORA and INGAT) 
5)  extension to other zones of the country with Black populations 
6)  financing and costs of program (5 year time horizon) = beginning 1995-1996 to 2000 
 
1996 Ecological Policies by MOE including the Forestry Policy 
 
1996 National Policy for Biodiversity 
 
1996 Decree 1397
 This was drawn up by the Government of Colombia along with 
Indigenous organizations creating the Nation Commission of Indigenous Territories as a 
participatory forum for recognition and granting of territorial rights  
 
1996 1
st
 Regional Committee for Black Communities, Cali April.
 The ethnic 
territorial organizations of the Pacific called a meeting in Cali for the collective titling of 
Afro-Colombian community lands with the aim to agree on principles, criteria and 
guarantees to guide the process of titling.  They also aimed to advance the exercise of 
focusing and prioritizing projects from a base set up from the local and department work 
of the Autonomous Regional Committees that propelled the elaboration of a proposal 
regarding titling. 
Participating at the meeting was the Presidential Consultory for Social Policy 
(Consejeria Presidencial de Politica Social), the Division of Black Community Affairs in 
the Ministry of the Interior, the MOE, the Geographic Institute of Agustin Codazzi 
(ecological zoning), Proyecto Biopacifico, Plan Pacifico, Red de Solidaridad and 
INCORA as the executing entities of the projects. Some 82 ethnic territorial 
organizations and their regional bodies participated on the part of the communities.  
 
They adopted as a pilot capacity building for the collective titling of ACIA in 
recognition of ACIA’s leadership and as an expression of the political will of the nation 
government to guarantee the integral recognition of territorial rights in benefit of Black 
Communities in an area of approximately 700,000 hectares.  From this experience they 
suggested the development of local autonomous committees to do the part of capacity 
building as a necessary and prior condition to go ahead with collective titling.  
The importance of these workshops called “capacitacion para la titulacion 
colectiva” was:  
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62
1)  organizational strengthening, territorial reflection, and adoption of the new 
institutionality created by law 70 of 1993 and decree of 1745 of 1995,  
2)  the constitution and consolidation of community councils (consejos 
comunitarios) and their boards as administrative authorities internal to the 
territory,  
3)  the promotion of the use and sustainable management of the natural resources,  
4)  the definition of boundaries and the intra and inter ethnic consultation, and  
5)  the construction of a new model of development that reconciles local regional, 
national and international interests. 
1996 2
nd
 Regional Committee for Black Communities, June 19thTumaco
.
They 
formed an orientation group (Commission for the Administration and Follow-up or 
“Comission de Gestion y Seguimiento”) to apply the territorial rights set up by the 
Constitution and law 70 for Black Communities. Receiving proposals from consejos 
comunitarios and organizations, selecting targeted areas and mobilizing resources. 
Participating were the palenques of Valle, Cauca, Nariño and working groups of Choco.  
 
1996 Mixed Commission of Administration and Follow-up July 4 (
Comision  Mixta 
de Gestion y Seguimeinto) in Bogota at INCORA offices to work out the program and 
financing.  Dr. Cesar Agusto Torres the INCORA head of Black titling program.  The 
Division of Afro-Colombian Affairs came up with a work plan with the inter-Institutional 
committees. 
 
1996, 3rd Regional Committee for Black Communities, Sept 12-13 Buenaventura,  
 
Focus on training for titling process, 
 
prioritization of projects 
 
criteria and methodologies – setting out selection criteria 
Criteria 
 
constitution of consejo comunitarios 
 
capacity of management, contracting and territorial definition 
Out Comes 
 
formation and consolidation of consejos communitarios 
 
elaboration of proposal for collective titling 
 
1996 Plan Pacifico $90m 
They pay the balance of capacity building (World Bank funds) and titling (INCORA) = 
World Bank money used for organizational and community building. 
 
1996 The 9
th
 High-Level Consultative Commission, Juanchaco,
 
August.
 (which is the 
highest entity of negotiation between the national government and Black communities) 
met in Buenaventura to support and endorse the mechanisms of the Regional 
Committees. 
 
1996 1
st
 Regional Committee for Indigenous peoples, Sept. 8/9 Peurco Negro,
 Puerto 
Tejada. This
 
meeting was for the constitution and demarcation of Indigenous resguardos. 
–
OREWA, OIA, UNIPA, ORIES, ORIVAC, ACIESNA.  A 36 page document was 
given to INCORA on “the territorial situation of Indigenous peoples of the biogeografic 
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63
region of 
the Chocó (situación territorial de los pueblos Indígenas del Chocó 
biogeografico)”.  34 outstanding processes for titling and amplification, 83 resguardos 
created, 45 of 210 communities without resguardos.
 
a)  delays in land regularization (INCORA) 
b)  need for training programs in territorial legislation to counter disinformation 
between Blacks and Indigenous people = NRMP funds available.   
c)  critique of regional INCORA official as creating conflict not respecting 
Indigenous rights, and not having a standardized policy. 
d)  Clearing and amplification of resguardos 
e)  ACIA/OIA discussion titling and inter-ethnic relations over territorial limits (data 
from OIA) OIA and ACIA joined together to address the series of conflicts 
generated “by the new legislation of Black communities” to come up with accords 
and define solutions to be respected by the authorities. 
f) 
Steps need to be taken to address the problem of campesinos and agrarian reform 
so that the Indigenous people and the Black communities do not have to assume 
the responsibility of addressing their land problems. 
 
1996 Mixed Commission of Administration and Follow-up Oct 4-8 
with the regional 
organizations 
 
1996 3
rd
 Regional Committee for Black Communities, Sept. 14-15, Buenaventura 
 
1996 La Madre Title resolution 0286, December
.
The 
first
 Black community title to be 
issued was the title of la Madre, in Bajo Atrato.  Shortly afterward the population was 
displaced by the paramilitary. 
 
1996, 2
nd
 
Regional Committee for Indigenous Peoples, Dec 3 Bogota.  
Held at INCORA offices in Bogota.  INCORA being pressured to clarify its position 
regarding Indigenous resguardos. The capacity building among community members was 
requested.  Diomenes Londoño (MOE) expressed his worry at the lack of coordination 
between the teams that manage the Indigenous and Black community affairs within 
INCORA. 
 
1996 Inter-Institutional Technical Committee
 to coordinate activities relating to the 
Afro-Colombian land titling and Indigenous Resguardo components.  The committee 
consisted of the Ministry of  the Environment (MOE), The Agrarian Reform Agency 
(INCORA), Divisions of Indigenous and Black community affairs in the Ministry of the 
Interior, the Red de Solidaridad, and Biopacifico.  More recently also representatives of 
Presidential Advisory on Social Policy, in the MOE, and the newly created unit on 
Citizen and Community Participation. There are plans to include representatives of 
Indigenous and Afro-Colombian organizations. 
 
1996 Red de Solidaridad Meetings and contract 038, September.
 
It was created with 
the objective to contribute to the improvement of the conditions of life for the most poor 
and vulnerable population and to facilitate their participation in the larger social 
programs.  They were to generate a climate of shared living, promote solidarity and 
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64
contribute to the process of peace through local and community participation in making 
decisions.  
The mission of the RED is: To push the social and participatory production of 
development that:  
4)  promotes the advance of decentralization,  
5)  generates a better commitment to local collectivities in the creation of their 
self development,  
6)  consolidate new institutional models for the coordination and control of social 
politics in the territorial entities and  
7)  promote social equality between all the population groups favoring the most 
vulnerable. 
 
1996-1997
 
The High-Level ConsultativeCommission 
is derived from law 70 and is in 
charge of overseeing the application of the law, the development of necessary legislation 
to institutionalize the law, and a body oriented to guarantee the participation of 
communities.  It was successful in the 1995 but in 1996-1997 it became disbanded in 
actions and lost relevance under the incapacity to guarantee mechanism of consultation 
and participation, but above all because it lacked a strategy that permitted the it to give 
itself the technical tools to formulae a policy or work strategy with a long term vision. 
 
1997 Midterm Review
 
January
 Establishment of legal and institutional conditions.  
The new priorities and broad objectives reformulated during the midterm review are to 
develop the policy, institutional and technical base for sustainable natural resource 
management introduced by law 99, with an emphasis on forestry and on the Choco 
Biogeographic region.  
 
Recommendations: 
1) 
strengthen INCORA’s institutional capacity – training regional staff dealing with 
laws 70 and 160 to resolve conflicts. 
2)  Technical Committee to develop a coordination strategy – training to sensitize public 
agencies and private institutions of purposes of law 70 and its compatibility with 
Indigenous Resguardos. 
3)  INCORA’ division on Indigenous Reserves and Black community land, Ministry of 
the Interior’s division of Indigenous Affairs and Red de Solidaridad Social should 
meet with Indigenous organizations and work out a joint strategy. 
4)  Broaden activities of Red de Solidaridad Social to have greater impact through more 
incorporation with other components of the program. For instance national parks, 
ecological zoning and watershed management components.  The recently formed 
MOE’s Unit on Citizen and Community Participation whose director formerly 
worked with Red may provide a needed bridge. 
 
1997 Displaced populations in Bajo Atrato, February 19
.
The titles of the Black 
communities of la Nueva, Dos Bocas, Taparal, Clavellino and Chicao of the Lower 
Atrato were issued. Shortly afterwards the populations were displaced by paramilitary. 
 
Page  65
65
1997 Evaluation Report, February.
 ACIA to do environmental education, INCORA 
troubles titling Indigenous Resguardos.   
 
1997 Internal World Bank Correspondence 13 Feb
.
ACIA
 interested in receiving 
support for natural resource management activities from the Bank loan.  Thinks it would 
be favorable as “following up titling with field-level NRM activities (training for local 
farmers and foresters) is an ideal way to proceed on these matters, and it would fit in with 
our position that there should be devolving of funds for watershed management activities 
to local communities and NGOs.” 
 
1997, 3
rd
 
Regional Committee for Indigenous Peoples, March 17. 
 MOE highlights 
lack of coordination between INCORA in terms of Indigenous and Afro-Colombian 
lands.  Increased funds from $200,000 to $500,000 to improve training for Indigenous 
communities.  Indigenous organizations presented to INCORA “priorities for Indigenous 
territorial resolution in the Pacific”. Problems of INCORA not able to do socio-economic 
studies because of interethnic conflicts. They declared that to be able to move ahead with 
the constitution and amplification of resguardos they have to have consultations with 
Indigenous and Black communities because INCORA can not unilaterally make decisions 
that will come to create interethnic conflicts.   The Regional Committee asked that the 
Ministry of the Interior prepare a proposal for the creation of a territorial, social and 
environmental analysis to  clarify the rights of ethnic groups and to propose a solution to 
ethnic conflict. 
 
1997 1
st
 Inter-ethnic Regional Committee
 held in Perico Negro, in the municipio of 
Puerto Tejada and organized by INCORA, was set up to revise tensions and possible 
inter-ethnic conflicts, to develop knowledge of the territorial rights, the action of the state 
and external violent factors. Black Communities and Indigenous organizations 
participated and so did national and regional entities.  They concluded that the Afro-
Colombian and Indigenous communities still maintain traditional methods of conflict 
resolution, and that it was nonetheless still necessary to adjust the actions of the different 
state entities for conflict resolution and to strengthen these mechanisms.  The principal 
factors of violence in the zone are fundamentally related to the presence of external 
armed agents.  
Nevertheless, the regional committee meeting ended on bad terms for the 
coordination between the government entities and the communities because the delegates 
from INCORA took extremely radical positions.  Other functionaries who had been 
contracted to work with Black communities used racist language that, far from helping 
understanding, contributed to the conflict. INCORA had also contracted people 
incompetent for the job. 
 
1997, Mixed Commission of Administration and Follow-up April 8, Bogota. 
 Organized by the Presidential Council for Social Policy. Protest by organizations of 
unilateral actionss of INCORA and outside agreements in Regional Committees of Cali, 
Tumaco and Buenaventura.  INCORA setting up its own consejos comunitarios without 
following criteria or consulting community organizations. It was using its own shadow 
NGOs which caused the fractionalizing of river communities and territories. 
Page  66
66
 
1997 Inter-institutional politics 
1)  INCORA cicumventing other organizations and accords made in Regional 
Committees:  Not following agreements of High-Level Consultation Commission 
to use Regional Committees as spaces for discussion, concert and coordination for 
the titling process. 
2)  INCORA defends position based on budget constraints and legalistic grounds.  
The Consultative Commission and not the Regional Committees have deliberative 
power. 
3) 
INCORA doesn’t agree with first targeting projects agreed in Regional 
Committees  and addressed 19 petitions from organization and communities not 
in Regional Committees of which financing 2 from national budget.  They say 
that training is one thing, and INCORA and the Technical Commission’s 
responsibilities under decree 1745/95 in the titling process is another thing. 
4)  DACN sides with INCORA and the other government agencies side with NRMP 
in debate.  Plan Pacífico – BID supports Regional Committees approach.  
Nevertheless, sometimes DACN helped ACABA when INCORA didn’t respond.   
5)  The High-Level Consultation Mixed Commission has power to define and review 
policy of titling lands of Black communities.  
6)  Diomedes Londoño (MOE) defends participatory and concertation approach and 
says internal differences of organizations are not for the state to interfere with. 
 
1997 October Internal Mail
 The PCU is aware of problems with INCORA but no 
progress. Concern expressed about titling Afro-Colombian lands at the expense of 
Indigenous ones. Suggests follow-up letter.  Shelton Davis sets out a series of things to 
evaluate the stage INCORA has reached in titling and the institutional obstacles. They 
proposed an evaluative mission by Shelton Davis and Phil Hazelton. 
 
1997 October, Concern and follow up letters: 
including 1997 Letter to Dr. Guhl
,
MOE 
raising concern about the lag in tilting Indigenous Resguardos and suggesting 
institutional improvements, including that INCORA meets with Indigenous 
organizations.
 
From September through December there was a growing concern on the 
part of World Bank staff that “as a great irony, as we would have titled Afro-Colombian 
land but at the price of the progress of the Indians” because of the delayed action or 
inactivity of INCORA in regard to Indigenous Resguardos.  The World Bank pushed for 
compliance, pushed for accountability with treats to withhold the loan, with letters to 
different parts of the Colombian government, especially the Minister of the Environment.  
They pushed very hard to get their goals met, including pushing for the change in 
personnel, for the institutional and legal reorganization of INCORA and integration of 
regional committees for conflict resolution. 
 
1997 Concern and Follow-up NOV 13
 letter to MOE from the country manager Andres 
Solimano of the World Bank.  Complaining that the major finding of the mid term review 
was that INCORA is dragging its feet and created the potential for increased inter-ethnic 
conflict through faster pace of implementation of the Black community activities and a 
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67
lack of coordination of the Indigenous and Black community programs.  In the last 10 
months little progress has been made in addressing the problems. Requesting high 
priority to this matter and an external evaluation 
 
1997 Outside Experts Evaluation November
 by Roldán. The evaluation also found that 
there was general government resistance to comply with their responsibilities to ethnic 
groups in the country.   The findings included that INCORA was not performing 
regarding Indigenous titling and moving very slowly on Afro-Colombian titling. In the 
year 1997 between February and  October INCORA did not do any processing toward the 
legalization of territory for Black communities.  It also was only able in all the time 
between 1994-1997 to title only one resguardo, the process of which had been initiated 
before the start of the NRMP.   
In 1997 the named High-Level Consultative Commission in charge of following 
through with the process of titling did not even meet once.  The Technical Commission 
which is comprised with the MOE, INCORA, and the geographic institute of Agustin 
Codazzi ,was inactive.  This commission is responsible to do the technical evaluation of 
the solicitudes and to determine the legal limits of the territory. 
The functionaries of the Division of Indigenous Affairs of the Ministry of the 
Interior indicate that the activity of INCORA , in the legalization of land for Indigenous 
peoples, can be found practically paralyzed through out the country including the region 
of NRMP and this paralysis has to do with 1)the lack of compliance by INCORA with the 
Indigenous policies adopted by the state, 2)with a lack of human and financial resources, 
and 3)with the lack of pressure and claims from the Indigenous organizations. The 
functionaries in INCORA say it is caused by: 1) administrative and political changes 2) 
and managerial relations in the NRMP. 
 
1997 Mixed Commission of Administration and Follow-up, Dec 5 (
Bogota) specific 
projects and problems discussed. 
 
1997 ACIA title, December 29
.
This was the first Black Community titles given out by 
INCORA to ACIA the Peasant Association of the Middle Atrato (Asociación Campesina 
Integral del Medio Atrato) representing over 100 communities in one of the most remote, 
riparian areas in the Chocó region.  It consisted of 695,254 hectares and is one of the first 
to an Afro-American population, delivered on the 11 of Feb 1998 by Ernesto Samper.  
However, in 1999 many of the members of ACIA are refugees in urban centers, 
while within the territory external forces have imposed a control as the only real power.  
This shows a real negation of the exercise of construction of governing and autonomy. In 
2000 thanks to the title and the new legal security over their  land the communities of 
ACIA have managed to neutralize to a large extent the advance of the war in their 
territory. 
 
The process of obtaining the titles was arduous.  They had to first negotiate the 
meeting and contract for mobilization, and training of the communities, then gather and 
process information, consult and agree with Indigenous, private and other organizations 
with property, with other Black communities and the state and now to define the new 
responsibilities since titling. The initial management of funds was difficult for the 
number of entities and people involved in the formalization of the accord because it was 
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68
structured for international governments and entities rather than poor rural farmers with a 
high percentages of illiterate members.  
 
Thanks to the work done before the process of titling ACIA not only had a huge 
knowledge of the communities but a huge ability to call meetings. They were thus able to 
do an intense job and hold 139 community workshops, 9 zonal workshops, and one great 
General Assembly. In order to solve border difficulties they created with OREWA and 
OIA a Inter-ethnic Commission to look for solutions. With private property owners and 
other communities they directly negotiated on a case by case basis.  
 
1998 January Supervision Mission
 The mission was satisfied with the overall  NRMP 
progress since the Mid-term Review. The Bank expressed serious concerns about the 
progress of Titling and Regional Committees in November. The Bank expects to receive 
a
Plan of Action
 for the remainder of Program for the Land Titling components by Feb 
27, 1998.  This Action Plan should link the operational plans for all three components 
into a single integrated work program with specific goals. This would include a strategy 
for documenting the experience and lessons learned by the NRMP and participating 
institutions.  
The mission expressed the Bank’s enormous satisfaction at the NRMP’s role in 
supporting Colombia’s historic accomplishments in titling Black community lands.  The 
Bank would consider a high priority additional funds or assistance required for 
Indigenous Titling component.  
They recommended that INCORA: 
1)  develop a computerized data system for tracking the process of titling. 
2)  contract regional Indigenous organizations to assist in conducting the delimitation and 
other topographic work necessary for the constitution of resguardos.   
3)  prepare a special land regularization plan for the constitution of resguardos in Cauca, 
Valle and Nariño. 
4)  the RED and other cooperating institutions should organize a special meeting of the 
inter-ethnic Regional Committee to discuss and agree upon INCORA’s operational 
plan for the tow titling components and to resolve any outstanding issues or conflicts. 
 
Impressed by the RED and the Regional Committee:  
1)  emphasis on active participation of regional Black and Indigenous organizations 
2)  pedagogical materials it has produced on the territorial and other rights of these 
populations.  
3)  recent initiatives to create inter-ethnic dialogue between Black and Indigenous 
organizations, as well as with state and regional institutions. 
However they can be improved by: 
1)  increasing number of stakeholders and organizations participating 
2)  widening the focus of discussion to include other aspects of the NRMP eg ecological 
zoning and national parks 
 
1988 6
th
 Regional Committee for Indigenous Communities Feb 5-
6, Bogotá
.
1)  Marcela Bravo of INCORA who was causing a lot of trouble sent excuses for 
not being able to make it to the meeting.  Casaman, of OREWA stressed the 
Page  69
69
importance of her participation to define clear actions and to not to have more 
meetings.  
2) 
They wanted to receive from INCORA a legal clarification of “inheritances of 
Black Communities.” General questions about the manner in which Law 70 is 
applied. 
3)  there was also no clarity in respect to individual private property titles within 
resguardos.  
 
1998 Feb 6
th
 Letter from Las Organizaciones Indígenas del Pacífico Colombiano
.
Additional complaints about the non compliance of INCORA and the government in 
general  claiming that there is no political will and lack of mobilization manifest worst in 
the Chocó and Cauca.  
 
1998 External Evaluation, Enrique Sanchez and William Villa, February 7
.
Recommendations and conclusions – the overall conclusion is that there is an absence of 
a
strategic vision in the development of the components and an absence of institutional 
direction to guide the process in a clear manner.  This double vacuum, strategic and 
institutional make difficult the resolution of territorial conflicts within the communities 
affecting above all the quality of community participation and the institutional 
development.  
 
Collective Titling is a decisive factor in the protection and guarantee of the 
physical and cultural integrity of the ethnic groups, but it is necessary to advance to 
territorial regularization to protect the natural community patrimony that they contain and 
to give sustainable productive alternatives that contribute to overcome  the conditions of 
poverty of the rural population.  
 
The consultative will of the program has been a very important factor in the 
developing the program.  It attended to initiatives from the population, and gained the 
confidence and credibility. Nevertheless, the mechanism of the Regional Committees 
needs to be revised to generate spaces that dynamize the consultative process beyond the 
institutions that the community organizations encounter in the procedure.  More 
important they could be used to advance the management of biodiversity resources in the 
collective territories of  Black communities in accordance with chapter IV of law 70 
whose clarification is essential to the construction of a conservation policy for the Pacific. 
 
The advances made in the titling of Indigenous territories is much more limited, 
which the Indigenous organizations see as a clear absence of political will.  In some cases 
the problem is methodological, legal or the absence of internal coordination of INCORA. 
 
1998 Feb 12 Supervision Report: 
1)  the loan has played a critical role, widely acknowledged in Colombia, in supporting 
the implementation of law 70 which recognized the rights of Black communities to 
collective land title.  This law had just been passed around the time the project was 
appraised and the contribution of the program to its implementation has far exceeded 
expectations.   
2)  the slow implementation of the component supporting the titling and delimitation of 
Indigenous resguardos in the Pacific. The Indigenous organizations do not believe 
Page  70
70
that INCORA, the land reform agency, is giving them equal treatment relative to the 
Black communities. 
 
1998 Feb 25 Letter from the Displaced Communities of the Lower Atrato
 
complaining about the titling program and saying that being displaced makes it more 
difficult to obtain a title.  They are requesting the participation of the International Red 
Cross,  office of the High Commissions of the UN and delegates from the Dioceses of 
Apartado and Chocó to form part of a high-level commission. They demand that the 
collective entitlement is part of their proposal for a 
dignified return
.
1998 letter from OREWA to the Bank Feb 25
 requesting the Bank addresses the lack 
of political will on the part of INCORA and government of Colombia in the inefficient 
manner in which INCORA is addressing the issue of Indigenous titling and in the little 
money assigned to the endeavor.  They would like the NRMP to prioritize the Indigenous 
issue and new resources to do it.  
 
1998 4
th
 
Regional Committee of  Black Communities, Feb-March (Bogota) 
1)  ideas to consolidate work with unified program; Black, Indigenous, and 
Regional Committees 
2)  INCORA to come up with a Plan of Action for Titling 
3)  29 projects underway  
4)  organizations present idea of support for productive projects in territories, 
including plans of management of natural resources and development 
5)  idea to extend to other areas (Valle Interandino, Antioquia, Risaralda, Costa 
Caribe) with the adoption of a special program of  acquiring land  for Black 
communities that are found outside of the Pacific.  
6)  participation in parks and protected areas $1,485,918,372 pesos solicited 
$200,607,584 approved 
7)  difficult situation of displaced in Bajo Atrato 
8)  INCORA promises to clarity the ownership of property in the Bahia Málaga 
and río Naya where the titles are to the government of Valle and the University 
of Cauca respectively.  
 
1998 7
th
 Regional Committee for Indigenous Communities Feb 25-
26, Bogotá
.
1) 
the Indigenous of Juradó claim that although the Black community uses the 
forest they don’t have possession nor was it their ancestral or traditional 
territory, thus they have no right to make claims 
2)  they complained of the valuation of land to be the bottleneck to “cleansing” of 
the resguardos.  “Cleansing” is outside Bank contract. 
3)  The general manager of INCORA, Otilia Dueñes reiterated that the institution is 
committed to the accords of the Regional Committee. 
 
1998 Letter from the Bank Task Manager to Indigenous Organizations, 9 March
 
outlining that they have received the card and are working on a joint solution between 
Indigenous and Black communities through the Action Plan. 
 
Page  71
71
1998 Action Plan
 
March
 was set up to combat the tensions between the community and 
the government. The estimated cost is US $ 3.6 million. This plan included 6 strategies  
1)  territorial definition for Black and Indigenous communities (regularization and 
titling) including entering into agreements with private bodies, 
2)  the coordination and agreement on the collective titling for Indigenous and 
Black communities for natural resource conservation,  
3)  community capacity building,  
4)  strengthening intercultural understandings, including with extra governmental 
armed forces, and  
5)  communication and coordination including the sharing of interethnic conflict 
resolution and the writing of memoir of the experience in general.  
Shelton Davis found the strategy good except that it: a) was delinked from experts 
report, b) too many acts,  c) not enough participation especially of Indigenous 
communities and organizations which leads to reinforcing state agencies and not 
Indigenous organizations.  
 
“The Collective title for Black and Indigenous communities is conceived as a 
strategy of conservation of natural resources.  For them,  for the titled territories they 
have to formulate and develop plans of environmental regulation, technological and 
appropriate production systems,  that are compatible with the offered environment, and 
with the socio cultural diversity. These systems of production must be economically 
productive and construct real and efficient alternatives to better the standard of living of 
the communities and the consolidation of the territories”. 
 
INCORA places both the Indigenous and Black community land titling 
components under the direction of the same division in INCORA to improve Indigenous 
titling. PCU and INCORA working to design a realistic program of implementation. 
 
1998 Letter from Jan Pablo to Bank Task Manager about External Evaluation.
 
He 
agrees with them on the need to move from “Titling” to “Management Plans” for the 
titled areas.  Also in agreement on the necessity to conform interethnic territories using 
the existing laws to permit in practice the peaceful coexistence of the groups through 
neighborly accords.  The objectives of the Plan of Action to go beyond “Titling” is very 
positive as long as we do not forget the titling is the initial and fundamental step to obtain 
other proposals. Titling does not signify territorial regularization although it is the initial 
step.   
 
1998 Mixed Commission of Administration and Follow-up April 15.
 Following to 
World Bank agreements 
1)  problems of INCORA losing 70% of funds for Black titling – ACABA delay 
and protest 
2)  “budget shifts,” only $100m of $400m pesos available  
3)  INCORA suspends the giving of titles and field visits 
4)  increasing violence, displacement and intervention of armed agents 
 
1998 Budget and violence crisis 
In order to balance the fiscal expenditure with the budget 1998 the government cut back 
the national budget substantially reducing the amount going towards the NRMP by US 
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72
$4.44 million. In the face of severe fiscal constraints and the unavailability of any 
investment budget for activities undertaken by the Ministry of Environment other than 
those included under the two loans from the Bank and a loan from IDB, in September of 
1998 the new team in the MOE together with DNP indicated to the Bank that it intended 
to “ close certain Program components in 1998, reduce to the minimum the amount of 
1999 budget resources allocated to the remaining components in order to leave room for 
funding new priorities, close the loan on December 31, 1999 (the original closing date,), 
and cancel the remaining loan balance of US $ 10-12. 
 
1998 letter from MOE to Bank Task Manager, April 30.
 
The consultants are 
preparing a legal proposal for the conformation of biethnic territories and to design a 
strategy for the prevention, mitigation management and resolution of inter-ethnic 
conflicts in the process of collective titling for Black communities and the constitution of 
Indigenous resguardos.  They also have contracted a lawyer specialized in Environmental 
law to conceptually and methodologically elaborate the process of verification and 
certification of the “ecological function” of property of the Indigenous resguardos. Data 
base for info management.  
 
1998  Letter from Bank Task Manager to PCU
 
May 14th
 questioning why Marcela 
Bravo Gallo was still Program chief for Indigenous affairs at INCORA saying that this 
must be sorted out before the Action Plan can go into affect.  It also encouraged the PUC 
to involve the community organizations in the selection of the consultants to carry out 
socio-economic studies. 
 
1998 Mangroves Meeting Bogota, June 3
.
The Technical Commission and the 
Procuradoria Ambiental y Agraria and community representatives of the zone affected 
produced an accord that established that they should go ahead and titles the territory of 
ACAPA explicitly leaving out the unadjudicable areas according to the laws.  
Nevertheless after this agreement ACAPA submitted a protest to the legal office and the 
division of Ecosystems at the MOE opposing the titling of these zones, because of 
cultural considerations, such as that the mangroves constitute a habitat for a high 
percentage of the Pacific, where they obtain their livelihood in a sustainable form which 
guarantees the food security of the ancestral population and that experience has 
demonstrated that the Black communities have conserved the mangroves historically. 
 
1998 GEF Proposal for the Serranía del Baudó June 17
 for biodiversity conservation 
while recognizing the rights of individual regions within the country to exercise their own 
development options.  They will work with law 70, Plan Paífico, Port Expansion Plan, 
Indigneous Territorial Entities, NRMP, and Land Use Plan (Plan de Ordenamiento 
Territorial).  The MOE has agreed to establish a coordinating program for the sustainable 
use and conservation of biodiversity in the Biogeographical region of the Colombian 
Pacific.   
They will work with Plan Pacífico (designed through the National Planning 
Department it is a sustainable development strategy for the Colombian Pacific coast.  The 
plan, which is largely funded by the Interamerican Development Bank, includes 
development of three kinds of infrastructure programs: 
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73
1)  social infrastructure including health, education, and housing,  
2)  Environmental infrastructure including land use planning, natural resource 
management, biodiversity protection, fishing and aqua-culture, and mining, 
and  
3)  physical and energy infrastructure including transportation, energy and 
telecommunications.  
 
1998 Consertation between ACIA, OREWA and OIA, August.
 
Finished one phase of 
the consultation on the territorial limits using the support of Regional Committees. The 
determined the final land mass of ACIA and delimited the neighboring 16 resguardos.  
This accord made possible the constitution of 8 resguardos in the Choco in 1998 and 
eased the following constitution of 6 others in the Choco and 2 in Antioquia. 
 
1998 MOE Evaluation of Indigenous Component, August 16
.
To evaluate the state of 
the components with a focus to institutional and community problems and obstacles.  
Although one can highlight that the titling of collective territories for black community in 
the case of Rio Sucio in the Chocó, has contributed to the return of numerous 
communities, and thousands of displaced, nevertheless, the confrontation with armed 
groups continues. The collective titling is a fundamental contribution to the rights of 
people of the Pacific in moments where diverse armed actors continue the appropriation 
of land for external agents.  INCORA was behind in titling resguardos and has various 
reasons for why this happened.   
 
1998 Mixed Commission of Administration and Follow-up, August 26-27 (
Bogota) 
1)  review of projects 
2) financial adjustments 
3)  progress in forming consejo and titling despite budget- violence constraints 
4)  new government, INCORA 600m pesos for capacity, consejo and petitions for 
titles 
5)  Mangrove (manglares) issue arises for the first time as a public use issue, as 
does the idea to exclude these zones from collective lands. A lot of community 
concern. 
6)  need to discuss Regional Committee and their use in national parks including 
buffer zones 
7)  computerizing all INCORA data or petitions for title. 
8)  ACABA and la Bocana proposals to be done with NRMP/INCORA funds in 
1999. 
 
1998 Aide Memoir Report, October.
 The Government of Colombia is considering 
restructuring the loan because of financial problems.  The Action Plan was beneficial in 
mobilizing the program and making it more transparent.  For the first time there is a 
systematic data base on the status of land regularization. However, the Plan will only be 
able to meet their goals with strong institutional, financial and political commitment. 
Interethnic consultation is fundamental for the concretizing of the territorial rights of 
Black and Indigenous communities of the Pacific.  The work of the RED is fundamental 
not only to reaching the goals but in guaranteeing peace and the comensurateness of the 
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74
region.  The agreements between ACIA and OREWA serve as examples.  They 
congratulated INCORA on its new Working Plan for 1998-99.  
 
1998 National Development Plan 1998-2002, October.
 
Outline for a policy of 
Sustainable Development in the Colombian Pacific, document for internal discussion. 
Recognizes the population as the principal subject and object of development thus it is 
must address two things: 1) the recognition of the territorial, social and cultural rights of 
ethnic groups that live in the region and 2) over coming poverty. 
 
The plan recognizes that there is a relationship between biodiversity and the 
existence of ethnic groups.  Tha
t
is to say the “biodiversity is the condition of existence 
of Black and Indigenous people of the Pacific and these peoples contribute to its 
conservation… the richness and diversity of the natural environment of the Pacific is 
inseparable from the cultures that live within and also constitute the base of is protection 
and development for the future. Biodiversity has to be a real option for development.”   
Comparative advantages of the Pacific include:  
1)  the megabiodiversity,  
2)  the cultural diversity that has protected and developed the biodiversity, and  
3)  the strategic location International basin of the Pacific Rim and between the 
two great maritime coasts of the country.  
Territorial regularization and decentralization are tools of development because they: 
1)  avail existing tools to citizen participation,  
2)  delegates and harmonizes competence among the state, departmental, 
municipal and ethnic entities,  
3)  designates resources to the generation of own alternatives to development, and  
4)  potentially help resolve conflicts peacefully.  
 
1998 Letter from OZBESCAC to the Bank, October.
 Asking for a cancellation of a 
contract for a consultant, Carmen Cecilia Toro Moreno because they are unsatisfied with 
her work and they proposed the name of Carlos Alberto Orjuela Laverde. 
 
1998 Report by Enrique Sanchez to the MOE, October 12.
 The violence continues in 
the region and the natural resources, especially wood and Naidi palms, continue to be a 
factor in the tension between communities and individuals.  There are newly displaced 
populations and there does not seem to be a clear strategy to attend to these populations.  
There is expansion of illicit crops in the areas of rivers Patia, Micay and Naya which put 
in danger the ecological and cultural integrity of the south Pacific coast. This situation 
makes the process of collective titles even more urgent. When the community has 
security in regard to their land and an organization that represents them (consejo 
comunitario or cabildo) they are more capable of confronting the pressure to grow illicit 
crops. 
 
The  National Development Plan and the Peace Negotiations are two policy works 
that will affect the  region.  There is a good will to work in the new government and the 
directors of INCORA and the RED say they will support and advance the process of 
recognizing the  territorial rights of Black and Indigenous communities.   
 
The position of the MOE not to give the go ahead to the collective titles in 
mangrove zones has generated bad feelings and lack of confidence in the government’s 
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75
actions. This position must be revised to give the communities in the south confidence in 
the government.  From the organizational point of view the Indigenous people maintain a 
more coherent stand in their participation in the program.  This had not been the same for 
Black communities which might affect the program in the future especially in the Cauca. 
 
The progress is coming along with better coordination and sharing of information 
such that the goals are reachable and probably surpassable.  Nevertheless there continues 
to be tension within the two working groups in INCORA (Indigenous and Black 
communities).  There is no clear process in mineral zones for resolving inter-ethnic 
conflicts of titling. The position of the Juridical office in the MOE to not give the go 
ahead to titling areas of mangroves has generated a complex and delicate situation.  “The 
communities of Patia Grand and Los Brazos united in ACAPA feel, and this is real, that 
to apply this intrusion , that in my judgement does not have a legal foundation, leaves 
them at the risk of loosing their lands.” One forgets that in this manner 36% of the rural 
population of the Pacific live in the coastal low-lying floodplain and 16% in the outlying 
isthmuses and barrier islands.  
 
Recommendations   
The MOE has to meet before a high level working group to restart the activities of 
regulating chapter IV of law 70 that regulates the use of land and the protection of natural 
resources and the environment. Also it should modify: decree 1320 of July 13 1998 
which regulates the prior consultation with Indigenous and Black community and the 
paragraph 10 of decree 2164 of 1995 which refers to the demonstration of the ecological 
function of property in the process of restructuration, amplification and cleansing of 
resguardos. Modify decree 1745 because it is too long and tedious through giving 
participation to the community, and getting rid of unnecessary procedures and 
duplications. And declare consejo comunitarios as entities of special public rights like 
Indigenous Cabildos. 
Law 70 truncated the process of forming interethnic territories.  Legislation need 
also reflect the actual settlement patterns of the two communities to make spaces for the 
reality of interethnic territories as a tenure modality and reduce conflicts through the 
incorporation of historical pasts of the communities.  
 
The Action Plan which was a result of an exercise of consultation and 
participation must be maintained and strengthened through administrative action as a 
contribution tot he generation of conditions for peace.  They do need however a database 
about the process of titling.  
 
1998 Letter to President from German Casama Gindrama, OREWA, November 12.
 
Complaining that between 1993 and 1998 not a centimeter of the territory occupied by 
Indigenous people was legalized in the Chocó region. They requested the naming of 
impartial functionaries to the Indigenous program and a change of the regional director of 
INCORA in the Chocó.  Shelton Davis stressed that the Bank should show support of 
OREWA to the MOE and INCORA. 
 
1998 Bank letter to MOE concerning OREWA complaint, November 30.
 
Asked for 
help to resolve the continuing problems in the Indigenous titling component expressed as 
great concern to the Bank and stressed that OREWA had written to Pastrana as well. 
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76
Stressed the 15 pending requests for titling saying they would like to see them completed 
before the end of this year and that the MOE strong support would increase the speed of 
implementation of the titling. They would also like a progress report on the Plan prepared 
in the next 15 days.  
 
1998 Expulsion of Regional Directors of INCORA, December
.
Due to community 
pressure mainly from Indigenous groups 2 regional directors of INCORA were forced to 
leave their positions.  9 out of 25 regional directors removed for inefficiency and 
irregularities.  The guy from the Chocó was removed for inefficiency and administrative 
disorder and the guy from Cauca went as well because of inefficiency in the titling of 
Indigenous resguardos.  Marcela Bravo was to be removed from the position of 
Coordinator of the Indigenous program. 
 
1998 Progress Report July-December (January 1999)
 they are making advances in the 
implementation of the Action Plan especially the solution of interethnic differences.  
 
1998 Convention 115 
between the MOE, the Regional Autonomous Corporation for 
Sustainable Development of Chocó, (CODECHOCO), the Institute of Environmental 
Investigation of the Pacific (Instituto de Investigaciones Ambientales del Pacífico), and 
the Integral Peasant Association of the Middle Atrato (ACIA – Asociación Campesina 
Integral del Medio Atrato) to formulate an Environmental Management Plan and 
Territorial Regularization in the Middle Atrato.  
 
The activities included: delimiting communities, defining community forests, 
social mapping, environmental conservation, identifying degraded areas, areas for use, 
conservation or reserves, along with a flora and fauna inventory and a characterization of 
traditional systems of production.  
 
1998 Municipal Plan of Territorial Regularization (Plan de Ordenamiento 
Territorial)
 By an executive decree, the Colombian government instructed the country’s 
municipalities to define a land use plan that accounts for economic, environmental, 
political, and cultural factors.   
 
1999 External Evaluation of Indigenous Component, Jan 29.
 
At the end of august the 
Indigenous Coordination Program of INCORA did not accept that the information over 
the systematization of procedures for titling resguardos be shared with the Regional 
Committees. The evaluation blames the rigid interpretation of decree 2164 adopted by 
Marcela Bravo to be prejudicial to the rights of Indigenous peoples.  She did not accept 
that he revise the interpretation for the final procedures.  The new directorship of 
INCORA, Rodrigo Villalba introduced changes such as the firing of the regional 
directors of the Chocó and Cauca, and the soon leaving of Marcela Bravo. He concluded 
that there was: weak application of policy and law by the state, weak planning and 
follow-up of the process, weak use of human resources, and information and 
documentation.  Very weak participation in the studies to construct resguardos. 
 
In November and December they had two meetings of INCORA that approved 15 
applications for Resguardos. INCORA announced a new path. An improvement by the 
end of 1998 on the goals set by MOE.  
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77
 
1999 Technical Report from the RED, January.
 The community leaders of the Pacific 
remain worried in respect to the state position toward the definition of the mangrove 
swamps as goods of public use which in a way does not recognize the system of life, use 
and conservation that the Black communities have in regard to the mangrove swamps. 
The made a move to get the MOE to define in a definite form their position.  
 
It was reiterated that they needed Regional Committees with references to the 
problem of National Parks and buffer zones.  They stressed that the RED would like to 
present to the MOE the importance on going on supporting the process of Collective 
Titling as a base for a sustainable development strategy.  
 
They signaled the urgency of addressing the chapter IV of Law 70 as a 
fundamental prerequisite to advance the formulation and implementation of management 
plans and environmental ordinances in Collective Territories for Black communities 
especially regarding the participation of the communities in the management plans of 
National Parks and other protected areas, the definition of training strategies for the use 
of natural resources, the ordering of the relationship between the consejos comunitarios 
with the private sector and with the municipal administrations. 
 
1999 Project Status Report, February 9.  
The key objective is to develop the policy, 
institutional and technical base for sustainable natural resource management within the 
context of the decentralized framework for environmental management introduced by 
Law 99 of 1993.  The security situation has substantial adversely affected the 
sustainability and impact of NRMP activities for example some beneficiaries of land 
titling have been displaced by violence.  Large reduction in government’s budget.  
Generally satisfactory progress made. They recognize that since the Action Plan progress 
has been made in the implementation of land titling components.  
 
1999 MOE letter to INCORA regarding Indigenous Titling, Feb 25.
 
Different 
worries about the speed and mode of INCORA operations especially on things only 
waiting for INCORA’s action 
 
1999 Mangroves - letter to MOE from INCORA, March 2.
 INCORA had a meeting 
on Feb 19  to analyze and conceptualize the juridical nature of mangrove zones and the 
implications for Collective Titling for Black communities. After considering technical 
and legal arguments they came to the conclusion that the areas of mangrove are not to be 
excluded from the titleable areas.  The letter requests the go ahead to title.  
 
1999 Supervision Mission, 11 March.
 To review the advances made on the goals set out 
by the Action Plan.  The MOE enscribed CODECHOCO and ACIA to formulate 
Environmental Management Plans for collective territories under the influence of ACIA 
to serve as instruments to support the making of decision about the use of the land, the 
quality of the environment and to proportion the conservation of natural resources. 
Recommendations: follow-up on INCORA’s promises to constitute and demarcate 
resguardos, the titling of collective territories for Black communities depends on the 
conceptualization of mangroves for inclusion or exclusion from the territories so they 
should speed up the decision on the mangrove, to hold a reflexive workshop about the 
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78
experience of the collective titles and the community participation which should be held 
after the meeting of Agenda Pacífico XXI and before the end of the project. 
 
1999 INCORA to OREWA, March 30.  
This is a report of the steps that INCORA took 
and how far they have come in titling Indigenous resguardos in the Chocó.  It is copied to 
the Bank.  
 
1999 Letter from OREWA to the Bank, April 11.   
 
1999 Shelton’s Back to Office Report, April 12.
 Improved relations with Indigenous 
peoples, collaboration between groups and the state entities. Significant progress in the 
Indigenous land titling and demarcation component can be directly attributed to the 
intervention of the new Director of INCORA who has begun a major reorganization of 
the agency including the nomination of a new Sub-director for the Social Property section 
and the replacement of two regional sub-directors who had been major obstacles to 
Indigenous land titling and demarcation in the program area.   
The mangrove problem continues to slow down the pace of titling of collective 
territory for Black communities.  There was notification of a resolution of the mangrove 
problem and evaluation of experience and workshop requested. 
 
The RED cut back its active role in the past several months because it was called 
upon to assist with the emergency in the Eje Cafetero of the earthquake. Shelton 
discussed with the RED and the PCU the possibility of organizing a workshop before the 
end of the project on the overall lessons learned from the land titling and Regional 
committees components of the project. 
 
A contract was signed between the Instituto de Investigaciones del Pacifico, 
CODECHOCO and ACIA to prepare a natural Resources Management Plan for the area 
titled by ACIA which will serve as a basis of decision concerning land use and natural 
resources management.  
 
1999 MOE legal analysis of the Mangrove Issue, April 15.
 The Legal office of the 
MOE was asked to state their position on the legal nature of the mangrove zones and their 
implication for the titling of collective property for Black communities of the Pacific. It 
was the opinion of the legal office that “the MOE is not the entity in charge of defining if 
a
good (bien) is or is not of public use, in spite of its involvement in the theme especially 
when it was part of the technical commission and when the discussion involves areas that 
house mangrove ecosystems, according to articles 12 and 48 of law 160 of 1994 and 
article 20 of the regulatory decree 2663 of 1994 INCORA is the entity that has the 
function of delineating goods of public use, that can not be included in the collective 
titles as stated in article 6 of law 70 of 1993 and article 19 of decree 1745 of 1995.”   
 
1999 National Parks and Regional Committees BTOR Hazelton, April 30
.
The parks 
has gradually worked toward more local knowledge, participation, acceptance and 
ownership of the parks in the Pacific, and has prioritized this aspect of the program for 
the future.  This is as much as anything a survival strategy in the face of severe rural 
violence, but also the result of a growing commitment to democratic principles of civil 
society participation. The Parks is currently preparing the stage for a future focus on 
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79
biodiversity conservation outside of the national parks, such as in municipalities, on 
Indigenous and Black community reserves and on private lands.  This exceeds the scope 
of the NRMP but will be built on its results and methods.  
 
Related to the guerilla, para-military and narcotics-related violence in and around 
the parks, the central government is calling on the National Parks administration to assist 
it in its peace negotiations and mediation efforts.  The central government has called 
upon Parks to invest more effort and resources in local community economic 
development activities, for which the parks system is not well prepared.  
 
The parks were encouraged to develop joint management plans for areas that 
overlap with Indigenous and Black territories as drawing in / upon other elements of the 
NRMP.  
 
1999  Agenda Pacífico XXI, May
.
It started with the issuing of the collective title for 
ACIA in 1998. The strategies include participation through better communication and 
dissemination of information, construct a region, and coordinate the region with the 
nation in development efforts recognizing the Pacific Coast’s unique political, economic, 
environmental, cultural, social and territorial conditions and positions within Colombia. 
Effort to develop from the bottom up an environmental policy and regional 
development plan (with a 20 year horizon) for the Choco Biogeographic region.  
Diomedes Londoño has been designated to lead this effort within the MOE, with the 
Instituto de Investigaciones Ambientales del Pacífico playing a key role.  They feel this is 
a
mechanism for much of the good work done in the Chocó under the NRMP to become 
more widely disseminated and used.  They insisted that this is a bottom-up initiative 
which builds on the dynamic created in the Regional Committees and not simply a 
bureaucratic or political one.  The process will be trying to develop in a participatory, 
democratic, tolerant and pluralistic collective manner the Pacific as a region.  
 
In April the Bank agreed to the use of 500,000,000 Colombian pesos to finance 
the process Agenda Pacífico XXI. Elsie suggested the full inclusion of communities 
living in the Pacific coast other than Indigenous or Black communities and to define ways 
to involve them as full participants in this process to promote peaceful coexistence. 
 
1999 Correspondence with INCORA, June
.
They titled 11 resguardos and amplified 2.  
The Bank was very pleased with the advances made. 
 
1999 Parks, June.
 Community outreach will in the long run contribute to the 
sustainability of the system. The parks administration is concerned with the issue of rural 
violence and security in and around the parks and is strengthening all of its participatory 
processes and outreach programs and training its staff to deliver them.  
 
1999 MOE Mangrove Update July.
 
They want to: 
1)  have a prior consultation of the communities living in the mangroves to revise 
from their perspectives the social, economic, political, cultural, environmental 
and territorial effects that could be caused in case the collective titles exclude 
the mangrove areas and the uses and methods for management of these areas.  
This will be coordinated by the Ministry of the Interior.  
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80
2)  construct a support unit to the Technical Commission of law 70 focused on 
decree 1745 and integrate working groups of both community and government 
entities that will bring to the process juridical, technical, ancestral, and 
sustainable, inputs adequate for use of the mangroves.  
3)  do an institution-community campaign to discuss the results of the prior 
consultation and the different inputs. 
4)  the results will be brought the Technical Commission who based on the 
available information must produce an opinion about the petition for collective 
title that includes the mangrove areas.  This will take 3 months 
5)  INCORA will title accordingly. 
The Bank task manager felt that 3 months was too long and did not understand why the 
Ministry of the Interior was involved.  
 
1999 MOE final evaluation, August.
 MOE agrees to overall workshop and reflection 
using the experience of ACIA as a reference for others at the local and regional level.  
 
1999 Bank Task Manager
 
to Enrique Sanchez, September.
 Wanted him to do the final 
evaluation of the implementation of the Plan of Action.  The MOE did not want to 
finance the work but the Bank would find funding on its own given the importance of the 
subject tot he Bank.  They would use the report as a background paper for a workshop 
with key stakeholders in the Chocó, towards November or December 1999.  
 
1999 Letter of Paola Agostini to Elsie, Nov
.
She is asking help for Luis Eduardo 
Agodelo a lawyer of the Association de Cabildo Indigena de Antioquia OIA looking for 
possible funding of land use plans.  He was instrumental and extremely important in 
resolving and mediating the conflict between the Black communities in the Naya 
Corridor and the Universidad del Cauca on titling of the corridor (the formal title belongs 
to the University since 1920, but the communities claim it.  The University is willing to 
give the land to the communities, but only if they prepare a land use plan.  The 
communities will not prepare a land use plan, unless they have the title.   
 
1999 Correspondence from OREWA, Nov
.
In October 1998 they had left with the 
Bank a project on Capacity Building and Territorial Regularization for the Indigenous 
people of the Chocó but they don’t know what has held up the proposal to date. They 
wrote through an intermediary at the World Bank.   
 
1999 OREWA Public Opinion Communique
,
Dec. They are publicly denouncing any 
connection with the Guerrilla and the violence in the area of Nussí-Purrú. They do not 
believe that through violence they will obtain social justice. They call for protection of 
the population of Juradó where the people have left for urban centers and abandoned the 
land.  
 
1999 Extension of NRMP, Dec 21
.
The loan was extended to close at the end of 2000.   
 
1999 Indigenous Legal Land Status. 
An
 81.65%
 of
Colombian Indigenous peoples 
have their territorial occupancy legalized.  Recognition by the state adopts the form of the 
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81
resguardo, a legal concept which, to the Indigenous peoples, has the meaning of full 
ownership of land.  A total of 469 resguardos have been created.  These lands, granted to 
the Indigenous peoples as freeholds, add up to a present day total of approximately 
27,954,896 hectares, which is 
24.48%
 of
the country’s area which in 1996 served a 
population of 638,606. 
 
2000 IX Regional Committee for Indigenous People May 11-12.
 
INCORA did not 
comply with the required requirements especially pitting the Indigenous and Black 
communities against each other through territorial definition.  Although they came to 
important agreement and concertation process with ACIA it has not been respected by 
INCORA and the Indigenous territories of the Medio Atrato have been ignored.  
INCORA also forces Indigenous groups to sign accords that are within the titles of Black 
communities of San Isidro which is Indigenous territory of Lomita-Curundó.  
The representatives of Cauca felt that the only part of the department that was 
advancing was the Andean part and ask for INCORA to direct the functionaries of the 
region to comply with the laws and to stop the same functionaries from telling the Black 
communities not to meet and come to agreements with the Indigenous communities, and 
to stop them from saying that they can not title more Indigenous land. They also stressed 
that they did not want the functionaries to bring people from outside the communities and 
who doesn’t know the territorial situation to the Regional Committee meetings.  They 
stressed that these people create false expectations among the Black communities that 
they “came remain with the territory that does not belong to them” as a part of 
politicking. This also occurs in the Chocó.  INCORA promised to send reports to the 
organization every 2 months on the progress it was making in addressing these issues 
 
2000 OREWA Status of Promises Review, May
.
This is a report since the Action Plan 
of 1998. They argue that the Action Plan set out to construct 35 reguardos and demarcate 
80 facilitated through participatory actions to focus and prioritize the needs of the 
community and to look for solutions to limitations of legal rules about the social and 
ecological function of property.  
 
They have, between 1998 and 1999 constructed 27 resguardos and amplified 6.  
Most of these were from old petitions and procedures.  They accuse the functionaries of 
INCORA of lacking political will, especially in regional offices. They accuse them of 
pressuring communities to sign acts which make vulnerable the Indigenous rights, like 
what happened with the Eperara Siapidara in the Ensenada de Tumaco.  Also of creating 
problems with other social groups because of their irresponsible commentaries and 
actions, like the letter sent by the regional director for Choco to the campesinos of Jaradó 
which had an interpretation favorable to the buying up of improvements.  
 
Now that the relationship between the MOE and INCORA is coming to an end, 
they are very worried about the future of the Indigenous program with INCORA, because 
with all the resources they advanced so little what can we hope for the completion of 
pending promises.  
 
They also wanted closure on the Mangrove issue from the point of view of the 
Indigenous legislation to solve the problem of the Indigenous peoples who live in 
Mangrove areas and use them traditionally.  Finally they asked for the Banks support in 
their calls for compliance.  
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82
 
2000 External Evaluation Roldan and Sanchez, June 9
.
Titling was introduced to the 
idea of the program as a strategy for strengthening sustainable development and cultural 
identity. It outlines the crises of 1998 that forced the Plan of Action into being, especially 
the slowness of Indigenous titling.  The end result of the Mangrove dispute was that the 
communities would get an exclusive usufruct right to the mangroves but would not have 
them included in community titles.   
 
The NRMP constructed 39 (out of 40) resguardos and amplified 7 which is a total 
of 17.8 of the total reguardos in the Pacific and covers 244,966 and 20,243 hectares 
respectively for a total of 265,209 hectares titled to Indigenous peoples with a benefit of 
44 communities and 2,096 families. The demarcated 33 (out of 123) resguardos.  
 
The NRMP titled a total of 1,655,305 hectares of land to 360 Black communities 
of almost 18,000 families. This was a completely new activity through the development 
of new mechanisms for agreement and the peaceful resolution of territorial conflicts. For 
most who participated they felt it was an important learning experience. The community 
valued the management and interpretation of maps, and images of remote sensing, 
fieldwork, surveying, making posters and manuals, the administration of public funds, the 
negotiation with entities and inter-ethnic consultations and agreements.  
 
72% of the goals for land titling were achieved, benefiting 19,860 families and 
almost 100,000 people with 89.45% being Afro-Colombians and the rest Indigenous 
(10.55%). 100% of all land titled collectively to Afro-Colombians in the region is due to 
this program, while 17 % of the Indigenous is.  The project spent US$ 3.25 of the US$ 
4.09 million allotted to the project. In other words some US$ 0.81 million is left over.   
The program met its particular titling and participation goals and provided a solid 
base for biodiversity conservation as almost all of the natural forest now fall outside of 
land markets and in some cases have improved prospects for conservation.  The NRMP 
represents 23% of the region. 
Two things must be addressed:  1) the Indigenous and Black communities that 
occupy the same territory, and 2) the character and responsibility and scope of the 
functioning of the Consejo Comunitario. The Consejo Comunitario in the very confused 
legal concept is the legal personification of the community but is constituted as an entity 
with a purely private character and the junta directiva (board of directors) is not a distinct 
persona to the council. It is a  clear disadvantage to the Indigenous Cabildos and the 
administrative councils of the future Indigenous territorial entities, which are clearly 
invested with attributions that are deeply buried in carrying out public functions. 
 
Some Lessons:
 One of the objectives of the Action Plan was to recuperate 
cultural processes of use of the territory and traditional knowledge of the biodiversity.  
The titling process generated an intellectual movement in the community where the 
elderly, hunters, gatherers and traditional doctors to reconstruct the history of occupation 
of the territory and to explain from their own perspective the importance and uses of the 
natural resources that exist.  Part of this knowledge is left in maps and minutes from the 
workshops of social mapping.  The most important as expressed by some of the afro-
Colombian participants was  putting the young and the old, the men and women together 
to work to socialize a traditional knowledge about the biological resources and the 
community territory as part of their own identity. 
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There was not enough participation of communities in other components of the 
NRMP.  The continuation of titling is necessary and should be continued with other 
resources once the program is finished in a less expensive and faster way.  
 
2000 Reply to OREWA July.
 
Asking about the follow-up of the Regional Committee. 
 
2000 Progress Report of Black Community Land by INCORA, July
.
38 collective 
titles to Black communities covering 1,662,158 hectares benefiting 17,823 families.  
There are another 30 or so remaining.  In the Annual Operative Plan INCORA had 
projected to process 77 petitions for collective titles (some 3,000,000 hectares) to benefit 
some 60,000 families of Black communities of the Pacific.