2018 global review of constitutional law: Colombia

The Colombian Constitutional Court faced four key questions in 2018: (i) how to bal- ance constitutional principles with the aims of transitional justice in the constitutional review of constitutional amendments, acts, and legislative decrees that implemented the peace agreement signed by the Colombian government and the FARC (Revolution Armed Forces of Colombia) Guerrilla; (ii) how to achieve effective protection of social rights and the accomplishment of goals of the social state, in particular, under the circumstances of massive immigration of Venezuelans; (iii) in a country in which mining products amount to more than half of the total exports,1 how to solve collisions arising between public participation, environmental rights, and the rights of the indigenous peoples, on the one hand, and the rights and interests linked to mining, on the other; and (iv) how to catalyze deliberative democracy, in particular, by means of the participation of citizens in abstract processes of constitutional review and concrete procedures of constitutional complaints (tutela). This report undertakes a critical analysis of the way the Constitutional Court approached those issues in the most relevant 2018 cases.