5) Description of initiative: There exist an understanding within societies. This understanding can have its origin and express through cultural, ethnic and normative conflicts. The program is looking at the recognition and valuing of the rights of aboriginal people, which has meant me acting as an Anthropologist expert before de justice officials, filing research and participating in national and international academic events. During this time we have directly contributed to obtain constitutional and legal changes in the courts and within the aboriginal authorities who nowadays have jurisdictional roles. Our field of work in the last five years has been has been the policy making in the government institutions in the constantly changing Constitution. The program is implemented in four areas in interdisciplinary way, including lawyers, logic mathematicians, aboriginal and non-aboriginal philosophers, justice authorities and public servants: 1) the legal anthropologic support, 2) . the education, 3) the knowledge promotion

6) Description of innovation: The anthropological approach: It focused in the cultural worlds which determine certain feelings, with performances that are very strong in the people and groups. The main component is to demonstrate that the culture is determining in certain conflicts. In order to define them correctly, is necessary to understand the elements of the culture, which is done by experts in the culture, just like a doctor diagnoses and provides prescriptions. It is not just the reading of some “signs” that are analyzed by people’s common sense. Each conflict is managed as unique by experts in the culture.

7) Delivery model: Today it is a model recognized at the national and international need of a subject matter expert, and I make the connexion between them. 3. By referral. 4. I participate in events. I promote the idea in talks, seminars, through books (12 published books on this topic) and other publications. I called to define how could they search and find solutions in a given situation.

8) Key operational partnerships: Oil companies. Constitutional court. Ombudsman. Government institutions. Universities. Institutions require a solution to their conflicts and their role is to provide true and necessary information. They finance the project totally or partially. My role is to diagnose, to expand the conscience on the quality of the conflict, to participate in the training processes and to build mechanisms in the institutions so they can overcome conflict and move onto the institutionalization of settlements. They promote the achievements.

9) Financial model: The first thing is to contribute to the search for solutions. The second thing is money. An institution refers others. I seek economic support from the government. I subsidized 100% the groups who need legal anthropological support; and partially those individuals or groups who require assessment and training.

          • Costs as percentage of income: -

          • Financing: if the beneficiaries are members of the institutions they then cover 100% of the expenses. If they are aboriginal or African- Colombian the expenses are waived. I would like to have a Centre for the Building of Intercultural Understanding within a university (like Harvard) I also develop audiovisual and written materials that are commercialized.

10) Effectiveness

          • Project outcomes: -

          • Number of clients in past year: Clients in past year: 9 Judges 30 Business men. 100 intellectuals. 150 government officers. 70 Law and Anthropology students . 85 government officers and intellectuals from Costa Rica . 70 government officers and intellectuals from Bolivia 100 government officers and intellectuals from Mexico 130 Intellectuals and non-indigenous people from Ecuador. 25 Judges and intellectuals from Argentina.

11) Scaling up strategy

          • Stage of the initiative: Mature stage.

          • Expansion plan: I want to start a Centre for the Building of Intercultural Understanding not only for Colombia but for the region. According to our analysis form our interaction and dialogue with many people, there exists a need for a place run by “experts” who belong to the different ethnos or not, but who have a criteria to understand, diagnose and intervene in cultural and normative conflicts.

12) Origin of the initiative: In 1976, arriving at Cauca, I suggested to my students that we went to the National Penitentiary to play soccer and sing with the convicts, as a solidarity gesture and as a way to train the future anthropologists. Inside the jail I met an aboriginal man who told me he was the murderer of Ulpiano Chocué, a witch. When I asked him why he was there he responded that he did not know. Fourteen years after, the Colombian State, through the constituents, recognized and valued the different languages, religions and family systems, the different ways to punish, to live with nature, and in particular, the own rights of aboriginal people-different to the positive law used by the state. The government gave them the possibility of administering their own justice in all matters. Given what I had learned in the jail, I showed a judge (I asked his sister, my neighbour to introduce us) – the horror and also the error that had been made. The judge was very open minded and he started asking for “anthropological judicial proofs”. Was there an individual behind the idea? A lawyer and an anthropologist designed an ethnographic to support the case. The contents were disclosed and in the same fashion another anthropologist used them. Based on this idea, I promoted the ethnographic for the search of specific cognitive referents to the conflict. This way I re-oriented a general idea and made it particular.

Contact Information:
Esther  Sanchez
Ashoka Fellow
Dr.
Programa para la Construcción de Entendimiento Intercultural
(ONG)
Colombia