The Government is designing the regulatory framework required to implement its “Final agreement to end the conflict and build a stable and lasting peace”, to which end the Ministry for Agriculture has published a draft law with the regulations needed to push through the policy of social regulation over rural property in Colombia, which has been declared for the public good and in the general interest.

This set of regulations starts from the premise that the social regulation of rural property entails democratising access to land for landless farm labourers or those without enough land, particularly rural women in the communities most affected by extreme poverty, emigration and conflict.

The “social regulation of rural property” is defined here as the set of processes involved in managing, allocating, recognising, clarifying, restoring, penalising breaches, consolidating and regulating the rights of use and ownership of property and the different existing relationships with the land, in order to propitiate the conditions that enable it to be used productively.

The text contains a declaration of principles, which include i) the general interest; ii) integrated countryside development; iii) structural change; iv) participation; and v) equal opportunities and gender-based approach.

It also regulates the substantive rules on access to land, covering issues relating to national boundaries,  the beneficiaries of land programmes and their corresponding obligations, the manner of accessing land and the integrated subsidy for land access, among other matters.