Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s recent announcement of a new court system to resolve land ownership conflicts in rural areas of the country has drawn a mixed response from advocates of campesino rights, some of whom have hailed it as a “great advance,” while others have questioned whether it will really work. The Dec. 29 announcement calls for five new courts to be opened in the cities of Cartagena, Quibdó, Popayán, Pasto and Tunja by May 2, with another 65 courts to follow, according to Aurelio Enrique Rodríguez, president of the Superior Council of the Judiciary. The courts will oversee agrarian issues, which currently fall under Colombia’s civil court system — a system critics say lacks specialized judges to clear the backlog of tens of thousands of pending cases. “We see it as a great advance that this agrarian jurisdiction has been recognized,” said Nury Martínez, president of the National Agricultural Trade Union Federation in Colombia (FENSUAGRO) and member of La Vía Campesina, an international movement that advocates for the rights of peasant farmers. “But when the courts begin to see its first cases, the appointed judges must have a lot of knowledge of agrarian law and must recognize the peasantry.” Martínez said she’s worried that campesino communities won’t be included in decisions regarding the implementation of this new agrarian court system, given the long history of peasant rights being ignored in Colombia’s political and legal spaces. She pointed to the 1991 Constitution as an example: Although it ushered in progress…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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