Constitutional guarantees of the Atrato river as a subject of law in Colombia. Rights and means of protection

Abstract

The Constitutional Court, in ruling T-622 of 2016, recognized the Atrato river as a subject of law and granted the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development the legal representation of it; this statement is presented based on various circumstances and environmental conflicts that have made the special protection of the river necessary to the progress of mining and other extractive activities, but it also entails great challenges in its application, largely derived from the lack of clarity regarding the rights that will be recognized and the constitutional guarantees thereof. In this measure, this research proposal seeks to make a hermeneutic analysis of the constitutional guarantees enshrined in the Colombian legal system for subjects of law and relate them to the declaration of the Atrato river as such, in order to find such guarantees analogically applicable for the same.