The Good Racist
The good racist has evolved so much that sometimes he cannot see color, the color of blacks who have been displaced, blacks who have disappeared or blacks who lack freedom. He is incapable of questioning why is it that the gym he goes to, the restaurants in which he eats and the places where he buys things are all racially homogeneous.
Read MoreLand Restitution in Free Fall
During the first term of the Santos administration, the Victims and Land Restitution Law was passed (Law 1448 of 2011).
Read MoreCan the Peace Accord Be Put to a Popular Vote?
Some have argued that whatever popular vote mechanism for the peace accord is unconstitutional, as it would not be legitimate to subject a peace accord to a citizen vote.
Read MoreSidewalks and Territorial Peace
Written from Puerto Asís, Putumayo.
Read MoreParamos and an Ecological Constitution
The Constitutional Court’s ruling about the National Development Plan is much more than the prohibition of mining in paramos.
Read MoreMarriage Equality is Unstoppable
Last February 7th was the nine-year anniversary of the Constitutional Court’s ruling recognizing the legal existence of same-sex couples and their inheritance rights through the institution of “de facto marital unions”, or popularly known as free unions.
Read MoreThe Peace Agreement in Colombia Matters, and it Could Set an Example for Entrenched Conflicts Elsewhere
The international community is engaging productively in a peace processes whose success is looking more likely by the day. And it’s worth taking note, because this peace negotiation process is yielding important innovations to balance justice and peace, and to focus the process on victims’ rights and reparations.
Read MoreWe Don’t Understand Feminism
Blu Radio, Héctor Abad and Mauricio Pombo show us that in reality we don’t understand feminism.
Read MoreThe Alarming Rate of Imprisoned Women for Drug-Related Offenses
In Latin America the use of prison as a response to drugs have disproportionately affected women.
Read MoreReferendum and Constituent Assembly
One thing is to think about bringing together in a couple years and in a post-conflict context a constituent assembly, with a limited mandate, to define the essential issues that have not been adequately dealt with in Congress, like rural land management. Another very different thing is to think to bring together a constituent assembly to conduct a referendum and implement the peace accord with the FARC.
Read MoreJudicial independence, democratic or corporate?
There is no democracy without judicial independence but this independence must be democratic and not corporate.
Read MoreThe rebellion of the trees
The revolt that has Turkey on edge shows, once more, that governments do wrong by underestimating environmental protests.
Read MoreFormalised or married?
Since June 20th notaries and judges must “solemnize and formalize the link” between same-sex couples that come to them with this purpose, given that this is how it was adjured by the ruling C-577 of 2011 of the Constitutional Court. But, should they marry these couples or should they join them with a different contract than matrimony?
Read MoreThe risks of a constitutional assembly
For an eventual peace agreement to be lasting and legitimate, it is vital that citizens ratify it at the ballot box. As my colleague Rodrigo Uprimny showed in his Op-Eds, the challenge is finding the appropriate mechanism: for it to be participatory and democratic, but at the same time resistant to political forces aimed at sabotaging the peace process or taking advantage of it in order to dismantle the 1991 Constitution.
Read MoreHow to ratify peace?
The democratic ratification of any peace agreement is imperative, just as I explained throughout my previous Op-Ed. But, which should be the mechanism? Is a law enough? Or is it necessary to take into account other devices with a greater participatory component, such as a referendum?
Read MoreThe Ecuadorian candidate for the IACH: The other path of the weakening of the Comision
The control of the public function is a disturbing task, but necessary in each democracy. Many governments that have disagreed with decisions of entities of control have found two ways of eliminating said control. One way is opposing publicly the decisions or even altering the competences of the entity issuing them. Another way is taking over the entity, guaranteeing that those integrating it decide in favor of its interests, or that they are so incompetent that the entity or tribunal loses any relevance.
Read MoreCongress: memory pills
The pest of oblivion in congress is increasingly critical. Now it forgets that is approved less than a year, a law about a topic and it is going through Congress once again. And to top it all, it legislates with a different and contradictory content.
Read MoreParking the mining locomotive
Given that the mining locomotive was left without the rules that allowed setting up its rails, there is no other alternative than to “put the house in order,” as the Minister of Environment told this daily. This means extending the moratorium of mining title deeds that the Government pertinently declared some months ago.
Read MoreThe democratic approval of peace
The agreement about land indicates that the negotiations at Havana are advancing. This begs an important question: an eventual agreement between the Government and FARC,should be submitted to a form of endorsement or democratic approval, such as a popular consultation?
Read MoreSub-rules to access or reject access to information
In this document, Dejusitica collected the principal legal sub-rules, derived from an analysis of judicial opinions that were issued between the years 2006 to 2013 by the Constitutional Court and the Inter American Court of Human Rights. Dejusticia restricted its analysis to opinions related to access to information, the restriction of information due to public interest, particularly when this restriction is based on rationales such as security and the functioning of justice.
The applied methodology involves a critical follow-up of the judicial task, selecting the sub-rule or normative principle that served as the core for each jurisprudential decision and, at the same time, constitutes a linking norm for another similar actual situation. Additionally, the methodology includes opinions that do not necessarily include the ratio decidendi or a unique reason that explains the decision of the case, if the cases present reasonable parameters to follow, that will be useful for the solution of similar future cases.
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