Bogotá, August 27, 2026. On this day in 1993, Colombia took a historic step with the enactment of Law 70, legislation that recognized and developed the territorial, cultural, economic, and social rights of Black, Afro-Colombian, Raizal and Palenquero Communities. Thirty-three years later, the law remains one of the main achievements of the Afro-Colombian social movement, but it also reflects a debt that the State has yet to settle.

Law 70 emerged from Transitional Article 55 of the 1991 Constitution and recognized a fundamental principle: the territories these communities have inhabited, cared for, and defended for generations are not simply extensions of land. They are spaces of life, memory, culture, autonomy, and community organization.

For this reason, Law 70 is important not only because it recognizes and protects collective ownership of these territories, but also because it establishes guarantees that allow communities to preserve their cultural identity, participate in decisions affecting their territories, protect their traditional forms of production, and develop their own economic and social projects. In other words, it seeks to ensure that communities can remain in their territories and determine their own futures without their identities and ways of life being displaced or threatened.

Its importance also extends beyond the communities themselves. Colombia is a country built on profound ethnic and cultural diversity, and guaranteeing the rights of Afro-Colombian communities means protecting a fundamental part of that diversity, as well as the knowledge, cultural practices, and ecosystems that these communities have safeguarded for generations. Fulfilling Law 70, therefore, is not only an obligation to the Afro-Colombian population; it is also a condition for building a fairer, more diverse, and more equal country.

However, 33 years later, the implementation of Law 70 remains incomplete. Some of its provisions took decades to be regulated. For example, Chapter IV, concerning land use, the protection of forests and water, and the use of natural resources in collective territories, was not regulated until 2023, 30 years after the law was enacted. Other provisions are still pending. Meanwhile, communities have faced displacement, confinement, violence, illegal mining, and other forms of pressure on their territories.

An Earthquake That Once Again Puts Territory at the Center

The significance of this debt became even more evident following the earthquake of August 10, 2026, whose epicenter was near the municipality of San José del Palmar, in the department of Chocó, a territory with a significant Afro-Colombian population. The disaster left 331 people dead and affected this region and other cities across the country, according to Colombia’s National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD).

Among the territories affected were also Buenaventura and Cali, two places with significant Afro-Colombian populations and histories marked by profound social and territorial inequalities. This makes clear that the effects of a disaster cannot be understood separately from the conditions in which communities live.

In Chocó, the earthquake struck a department already facing the impacts of armed conflict, confinement, displacement, poverty, and longstanding difficulties in accessing services and infrastructure. The natural disaster thus compounded a social emergency that did not begin on August 10.

For many communities, reconstruction means much more than rebuilding a home. It means recovering their livelihoods, roads, schools, and community spaces, but also ensuring the conditions necessary to remain in their territories and continue developing their collective projects.

For this reason, reconstruction cannot be limited to rebuilding damaged infrastructure. It must recognize the specific characteristics of collective territories, their authorities, their forms of organization, and the historical relationship between communities and their land. How can these territories be rebuilt without first effectively guaranteeing the rights that Law 70 recognized 33 years ago?

A Debt the State Must Settle

At the Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights (Race and Equality), we believe that the 33rd anniversary of Law 70 must be an opportunity for the Colombian State to move from the formal recognition of rights to their effective guarantee for Black, Afro-Colombian, Raizal and Palenquero Communities. The Government must advance pending regulations, strengthen the protection of collective territories, and guarantee the effective participation of communities and their authorities in decisions that affect them.

The reconstruction of the areas affected by the earthquake must incorporate an ethnic and territorial approach and become an opportunity to address, rather than reproduce, the historical inequalities affecting territories such as Chocó, Buenaventura, and Cali. Reconstruction cannot simply mean rebuilding what collapsed. It must also mean guaranteeing that communities can live with dignity, exercise their autonomy, and remain in the territories they have cared for and defended for generations.