9
whose requirements shall be established by the State. 8 In this manner, the referred
organizational forms are formed as an expression of the autonomy of the communities
settled in such zones, so the distinction between Community Councils, as well as Major or
Minor Councils, and consequently, the membership of a plurality of persons to the
communities formed by them, is an objective criteria for the determination of the range of
beneficiaries of the present provisional measures; therefore, the Court shall analyze it at
once. This does not occur with the rest of the criteria submitted by the Inter-American
Commission (supra Considering 12), that, as it has been expressed by the State, do not
provide adequate objective elements that allow us to differentiate the beneficiaries of the
present measures in a collective sense, specifically, in the context of the general conditions
of the armed conflict in the Colombian State.
19.
That according to the information submitted by the Inter-American Commission, the
Inter-Ecclesiastical Commission of Justice and Peace, the representatives of the 231 families
and the State, there is a substantial number of “Minor Community Councils” on the basin of
the Jiguamiandó and Curbaradó rivers. In the present matter, there are two groups
differentiated regarding their membership to different “Minor Community Councils.” The first
group is formed by the 161 families organized in the “Humanitarian and Biodiversity Zones”
that form the “Minor Community Councils” of the Community Councils of Jiguamiandó and
Curbaradó, which are beneficiaries of the present provisional measures ordered since March
6, 2003. The second group is formed by 231 families that have joined the request before
this Tribunal, of which “32 families belong to the Minor Councils Of Puerto Lleras and Pueblo
Nuevo, that are part of the Major Council of the basin of the Jiguamiandó River” and “199
families that form, in its majority, the Minor Council of Bocas Curbaradó, that belongs to the
Major Council of the basin of Curbaradó,” (supra Considering 9, 13 and 14). There is a
majority group formed by 450 families that did not state their membership to any
community council of the zone and they only stated “to be part of the black communities of
Puerto Lleras and Pueblo Nuevo” that lived in a condition of displacement (supra
Considering 11).
20.
That despite that, the Commission did not inform to the Tribunal which of these
groups or “Minor Community Councils” was the beneficiary of the present provisional
measures. From the request for the adoption of provisional measures submitted by the
Inter-American Commission in 2003, it cannot be inferred regarding from which of the
different “Minor Community Councils” was the protection requested. On the contrary, the
request refers in a generic manner to those persons that form the “Minor Community
Councils”, namely:
The Community Council of Jiguamiandó and the families of Curbaradó, that normally inhabit the
margins of those rivers, are formed by a total of 2125 Afro-descendent (515 families), whose
collectively titled territory amounts to 54.973 and 25.000 hectares, respectively, in the
municipality of Carmen del Darién, Department of Chocó […] The 2125 members of the Afrodescendent communities in whose favor the adoption this measures is requested are a perfectlyidentifiable group that forms the so-called “Minor Community Councils” recognized by the […]
State in the procedure of precautionary measures before the Commission as well as at the local
and municipal level, and whose existence is recorded in official records. The State not only has
acknowledged the collective property that this community exercises over its land, but also their
self-governing mechanisms.
21.
That, in the way that they have been stated, the membership criterion submitted by
the Commission remains insufficient for the determination of the range of persons that in
8
In what is relevant, Article 5 of the Law 70 of 1993 establishes that “[t]o receive as collective property the
land subject to adjudication, each community shall form a Community Council as a form of internal administration,
whose requirements shall be determined by the Rules issued by the National Government.”