Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

BOLIVIA: Moving Towards a Decentralisation of Justice

Franz Chávez

LA PAZ, Sep 13 2004 (IPS) - As public demand for local conflict resolution mechanisms and dissatisfaction with law enforcement institutions are growing in Bolivia, the government, judiciary and social organisations are preparing for a decentralisation of the justice system.

Over half of the 314 municipal governments in this Andean country of 9.2 million have neither a court of law nor any institution specialising in conflict resolution, according to a report by the Justice and Participation Network, which links more than 100 local civil society organisations.

Social and political tensions have led to outbreaks of unrest and violence in Bolivia, especially in remote highland villages and towns and in slum neighbourhoods.

Both the government and non-governmental organisations agree that the absence of local courts and justice services has helped fuel the violent reactions.

Illustrations abound. The highest profile case occurred in June, when the mayor of the Andean town of Ayo Ayo, Benjamín Altamirano, was kidnapped and killed, and his body burnt in the town square, by a group of local residents enraged that their continuous complaints of corruption by local officials had fallen on deaf ears.

In the following months, other municipal authorities in rural areas quit or were removed, as a result of pressure, threats and violence stemming from local unrest over social and political problems.

Social discontent in the impoverished eastern city of El Alto, located next to La Paz, even led to the collapse of the government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in October 2003.

The month-long protests, which spread to other parts of the country, were triggered by opposition to the Sánchez de Lozada administration’s plan to export natural gas to the United States and Mexico through a port in Chile, with which Bolivia has a long-standing dispute since that country seized Bolivia’s Pacific shoreline in a late 19th century war.

At least 70 were killed in October when the government called out the army and police to quash the demonstrations.

"The lack of access to justice is directly related to the level of poverty and social exclusion," states an agreement signed by the government and the Supreme Court on the need to decentralise the justice system and bring the work of judges, prosecutors and other aspects of the judiciary to small towns and villages – a project that will begin to be implemented in the next few months.

Bolivia is not only geographically diverse, with its terrain ranging from the Andean highlands to the Amazon jungle, but is also home to a variety of indigenous groups, who differ greatly among themselves in cultural, linguistic and religious terms.

More than 60 percent of the population is comprised of indigenous people, who are divided into three main ethnic groups: the Aymara of the highlands; the Quechua on the eastern and western slopes of the Andes mountains; and the Tupi-Guaraníes in the lowlands.

Given that diversity, the formula chosen to boost local access to and participation in the criminal justice system are Integrated Legal Services Centres.

These specialised working groups will be set up in slum neighbourhoods and isolated rural areas to provide legal services and assistance, alternative community dispute resolution systems, and information and education to bolster public awareness on citizen rights and planned reforms of the criminal justice system.

The aim is improved access to, and confidence in, the criminal justice and democratic systems by disadvantaged and marginalised populations.

"In short, the objective is to transmit a culture of peace and social coexistence in the context of a productive Bolivia," says the non-governmental organisation Citizens Working for Justice, which backs the initiative promoted by the roughly 100 social organisations grouped in the Justice and Participation Network.

The proposal will be added to the agenda of the National Productive Bolivia Dialogue, set up to debate formulas for fighting poverty, with the participation of local and national authorities and representatives of civil society.

The Dialogue is considered a forerunner to the constituent assembly to be created next year to rewrite the constitution.

The first National Dialogue meeting was held in 2000, to design the policies to govern state assistance to municipal governments in the areas with the highest poverty rates. According to official statistics, 71 percent of the population lives below the poverty line in Bolivia, the poorest country in South America.

The participants in the National Dialogue put the emphasis on the search for productive and economic strategies that will guarantee the development of the most economically depressed regions.

But Citizens Working for Justice considers local access to justice and conflict resolution mechanisms a top priority.

"If a person, whether poor or rich, has no access to justice, they will not be able to assert their rights and will be unable to contribute to the process of poverty alleviation, or benefit from its achievements," says the organisation.

"Up to now, the justice system has merely served to throw the poor into prison," local artisan Martha Lazo told IPS.

Lazo and her mother and two daughters have a workshop in eastern Bolivia in which they produce leather and wood crafts.

The activist, who is the head of the local organisation Social Control Mechanism, believes the expansion of the justice services to slum neighbourhoods and rural towns and villages will help strengthen the activity of small Bolivian producers.

As one of the leaders of the artisan community, Lazo complains about the centralisation of the legal paperwork for setting up a small business, and advocates the decentralisation of offices to provide assistance and attention to the public in remote rural areas.

The pilot phase of the project will involve the creation of Integrated Legal Services Centres in El Alto, which is largely comprised of shantytowns, and in the coca-growing regions of Yungas in the east and Chapare in central Bolivia.

The director of the programme, Daniel Mancilla, told IPS that municipal governments are providing the plots of land where the Integrated Legal Services Centres are being built, while the police and judiciary will assign personnel to staff the new offices.

Financing for the initiative is coming from donations from international agencies, like Partners of the Americas – a volunteer organisation that promotes social and economic development in Latin America – and USAID.

"Demands for justice grow at times of political crisis and instability," said former Bolivian justice minister Carlos Alberto Goitia, who works with Partners of the Americas.

The new National Dialogue will debate "the protection of citizen rights and productive activity in a favourable setting, and access to justice is the first step in that project," Goitia told IPS.