A/HRC/16/45/Add.1 Caribbean/Atlantic and Pacific Coastal regions where Afro-Colombian communities are prominent, including Cartagena, San Basilio de Palenque, Turbaco (Bolívar), Urabá region and Curvaradó (Chocó/Antioquia), Apartado, Quibdo (capital of Chocó), Cali, Buenaventura (Valle del Cauca) and the municipality of Suárez (Cauca). III. Legal framework and enforcement mechanisms 6. Colombia’s Constitution provides under article 7 that the State “recognizes and protects the ethnic and cultural diversity of the Colombian Nation”. The right to equality and non-discrimination is incorporated into the Constitution via components including: (a) a general principle whereby all persons are born free and equal before the law and shall be given equal protection and treatment by the authorities; (b) prohibition of discrimination; (c) the State’s duty to promote conditions for ensuring that equality is real and effective for all persons (art. 13); and (d) the possibility of instituting special measures to improve the circumstances of groups that are discriminated against or marginalized (art. 13)4. 7. An institutional framework exists to formulate policies to protect the rights of ethnic groups. The Department of Indigenous, Minority and Roma Affairs and the Department of Black, Afro-Colombian, Palenquero and Raizal Community Affairs exist within the Ministry of the Interior and Justice. Additionally, the Vice-President chairs the national Intersectoral Commission for the Advancement of the Afro-Colombian, Palenquera and Raizal People. 8. Law 70 of 1993 “In Recognition of the Right of Black Colombians to Collectively Own and Occupy their Ancestral Lands” is the primary national legislation dedicated to the rights of Afro-Colombians and is exemplary in its provisions to protect and promote their rights. Article 1 states: “The object of the present Law is to recognize the right of the Black Communities that have been living on barren lands in rural areas along the rivers of the Pacific Basin, in accordance with their traditional production practices, to their collective property”. Law 70 establishes a wide range of collective and individual rights including the right to education and protection of cultural identity. 9. Law 70 establishes the process for the granting of collective property title based on a technical evaluation of requests and information including a physical description of the land, ethno-historic antecedents, demographic description, and details of traditional practices of production. Collective territories are to be “non-transferable, imprescriptible, and non-mortgageable”5. Article 5 requires each community to form a Community Council as its primary internal administrative body in order to receive adjudicable lands as collective property. 10. On the basis of Law 70, the Government states in its 2008 report to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD/C/COL/14), that at that time collective titles had been allocated for 5,128,830 hectares, benefiting 60,418 families. The Colombian Institute for Rural Development (Instituto Colombiano de Desarrollo Rural – INCODER) has processed applications for collective titling since 2008 that have increased the total by 4 5 4 See the 14th periodic report of Colombia to CERD of May 2008, CERD/C/COL/14, considered by the Committee in August 2009. Article 7 of Law 70 states that: “Only areas assigned to a family group can be transferred, whether through the dissolution of the group or any other cause indicated in the Law, but the preferential right to occupy or acquire the land can only fall to other members of the community, and, in their absence, to another member of the ethnic group, for the purpose of preserving the integrity of the lands and the cultural identity of the Black Communities.”