Non-municipalized areas and autonomy of indigenous communities in Colombia

Abstract

The non-municipalized areas, present in the departments of Amazonas, Guainía and Vaupés in Colombia, are territories that do not coincide with the territorial entities of local level defined in the 1991 Constitution, so that their management is in hands of the administration of the department to which they belong. From a normative and documentary review to identify the reasons and particularities that have prevented its formalization as territorial entities, it was determined that these areas have certain social, economic and environmental characteristics very different from the other territories of Colombia. Attempts to convert them into territorial entities or to annex them to other existing local level entities have been unsuccessful, because the current regulatory frameworks do not reflect the particularities related to the links between the territory and the indigenous communities that inhabit them. The national government has chosen to recognize more and more rights to the Indigenous Territories present in these areas, because it is very unlikely that the Congress will authorize the creation of the so-called Indigenous Territorial Entities.