Lineamientos sanitarios versus derechos constitucionales: el caso de la sentencia T-318 de 2021 emitida por la corte constitucional de Colombia

Abstract

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes a ruling by Judgment of the Constitutional Court of Colombia in which an indigenous community of this country filed a lawsuit against the local health authorities. Through their legal representative, the natives requested, among other things, that their rights to ethnic and cultural diversity be protected, considering that the health authorities did not allow one of their dead to be buried according to their traditional ritual, and in their ancestral territory. The health authorities argued that they acted in accordance with the health guidelines imposed due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The Court finally ruled in favor of the indigenous community, protecting the right to religious freedom, and requiring the health authorities to exhume the corpse so that the natives could perform their mortuary ritual. This case shows that there was a tension between constitutional rights and the health regulations generated as a result of the pandemic. In this way, the authorities are invited to evaluate more carefully the measures that, although taken in the name of security, could curtail freedoms and seriously affect the rights of citizens, including, of course, the rights of ethnic groups in a pluralistic country.