Reconceptualization of the right to personal liberty and security: an analysis of decision T 719/2003

Abstract

We present an analysis of decision T 719/2003 of the Colombian Constitutional Court (Court), which, through a presentation made by judge Manuel José Cepeda, protects the right to freedom and personal security of the widow and the younger child of a guerrilla reinserted of the self-proclaimed Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), murdered because of the State’s omission to grant minimum security conditions, facing extraordinary risks and vulnerabilities to which he submitted with his surrendering and commitment to peace. The analysis casts a light on the scope of this right in the Colombian internal armed conflict, an ongoing onefor more than seventy years, which has been causing its constant violations, and describes the intervention of the Court against the inefficiency of reintegration programs governmental due to bureaucratic procrastination, under which precedents develop for the protection of the right in question, under a paradigm of evolutionary and creative interpretation of the Constitution, stating the postulates of legal guarantor. We believe that the proposed here can serve as a reference for specific measures in favor of the demobilized from the war, up to the eventual success of the peace negotiations with the FARC, currently led by the government of Juan Manuel Santos.