93%
More than 93 percent of people in Colombia believe that the duration of proceedings is a fundamental problem for justice in Colombia, and 42.5 percent say the main reason that they refrain from approaching the justice system to resolve disputes is that the system takes too long to resolve them, followed by lack of trust in the institutions (30.5 percent) and too many stages (15 percent).
Colombia’s justice system is at capacity. Every year, more cases enter the system than are finalized. Between 1996 and 2022, the Colombia population grew by 39 percent (from 37 million to 52 million), while the demand for justice (as measured by the number of cases filed) per one hundred thousand inhabitants doubled (from 2,600 to 5,200). In practice, this meant that the number of cases filed per day grew by 258 percent, and the number of cases that entered the system grew by 172 percent.
39%
Among the 301 surveyed companies in Colombia, tutela actions were ranked as the timeliest path to justice, with 60 percent of companies either totally or mostly agreeing, followed by alternative dispute-resolution mechanisms such as conciliation (53 percent) and arbitration (52 percent). On the other hand, judicial mechanisms within the ordinary jurisdiction, including civil or commercial judges and labor judges, were perceived with less optimism.
60%
Agreement on whether judges sanction delaying tactics varied. Sixty-four percent of interviewees said judges do so for tutela actions, 60 percent for conciliation, 59 percent for arbitration, 57 percent for labor judges and judges in superintendencies, 56 percent for administrative judges and the Council of State, and 53 percent for both civil or commercial judges and labor inspectors.
64%
In the international cooperation side, a program that has previously proven successful in helping alleviate some of these strains in Colombia was Casas de Justicia (Houses of Justice), a group of multi-door community dispute-resolution centers. Launched as a pilot project with the support of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in two large low-income neighborhoods in Bogotá (Ciudad Bolívar) and Cali (Aguablanca) more than twenty-five years ago, the program has expanded into 158 communities in 132 municipalities across the country.
158