Country profile
Colombia is a unitary country with an administrative structure born of the constitutional reform of 1991. It is composed of 32 administrative departments and the Capital District of Bogota. Departments are divided into a total of 1 101 municipalities. Among them, five – Cartagena, Barranquilla, Bogotá, Buenaventura, Santa Marta and Villa de Mompox – are categorised as special districts due to their particular political, commercial, historical, industrial, cultural or environmental characteristics, according to a new regime adopted in 2013, and updated in 2017. Each department has a local government with a governor and assembly directly elected for four-year terms, and each municipality is headed by a mayor and a local council. The 1991 Constitution also accords special status to certain territories: 87 indigenous territories that account for 3.4% of the total population (DANE, 2006[1]).