The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of Colombia, Jhenifer Mojica, and the director of the National Land Agency, Felipe Harman, filed this Wednesday before the Constitutional Court the request that a public hearing be convened regarding the claim of alleged unconstitutionality that concerns article 61 of the National Development Plan, which refers to the mechanisms to facilitate land purchase processes by voluntary offer.

In the petition filed before the highest court, it is stated that “the norm in question is of special importance and significance, not only for the National Government, because it is an instrument that establishes strategies to materialize the economic, social and environmental goals and objectives outlined in the National Development Plan (PND), but also for the Colombian State as a whole, to the extent that it contains tools that allow compliance with the Final Peace Agreement.”

After the filing of the request, Minister Mojica explained that, covered by the requested article, the Government allocated resources of $883,122 million in 2023 and in 2024 three billion pesos were awarded for the acquisition of land.

“What is requested is a public hearing with the intervention of experts in agrarian matters, such as the land and peasant line of the Justice and Society Law Studies Center -Dejusticia, the Land Observatory of the University of Rosario, the Center for Intercultural Studies from the Javeriana University of Cali, among others. It is worth remembering that this is a norm with profound implications, both in the implementation of the National Development Plan and the Final Peace Agreement as a State commitment. The aim is to establish a broad debate, which offers greater clarity to the honorable Constitutional Court on the basis, content and scope of the accused provision based on the expertise of those who directly participate in its implementation," added Minister Mojica.

In her explanatory statement, the minister pointed out that the guarantee of the right to land includes rights such as territoriality, food, the basic minimum, work, the freedom to choose a trade or profession, the free development of personality and participation, as manifestations of human dignity, and which are achieved with the application of article 61 of the PND.

“What these demands seek is to destroy the possibility of a country that can transcend the historical debt of the Agrarian Reform and prevent the Peace Agreement from being fulfilled, as the last government did, which is where these demands come from. ”Mojica emphasized.

Harman, for his part, stated that the claims of apparent unconstitutionality that have been filed against the aforementioned article are based on an erroneous interpretation of the norm and are devoid of constitutional argumentation.

“The plaintiffs have alleged formal errors in the production of the norm and have substantially accused it of ignoring the right to private property, access to the administration of justice, the collective property of ethnically differentiated communities and even of being a measure that ignores the principle of progressivity and the prohibition of regressivity. However, the arguments of the demands do not address the reality of the development of special agrarian procedures,” concluded the director of the National Land Agency.