Indigenous Community Justice in the Bolivian Constitution of 2009

Abstract

The Bolivian constitution, debated in a Constituent Assembly in 2006 and 2007 called by the country's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, was adopted in a referendum in 2009. Among many other important provisions recognizing the country's majority indigenous population, it legitimizes the practice of indigenous community justice. Indigenous justice differs in important ways from the national justice system and from the international human rights regime but it expresses a legitimate assertion by the country's indigenous peoples of their cultural integrity.