urgency, or a State response that is not in keeping with the appropriate response required
to this type of situation.”
27.
Therefore, Colombia argued that the monitoring of the special situation of the
communities of the Jiguamiandó and of the Curvaradó is a result of a legal and
constitutional mandate derived from compliance with both the orders of the Constitutional
Court (infra considering paragraphs 36 and 37), the highest constitutional court of the
State, and the Inter-American Court. Consequently, it indicated that the actions taken
based on the decisions of the Constitutional Court concur with the mandate of protection
established by the Inter-American Court by means of these provisional measures and that,
to a certain extent, those actions exceed the sphere and nature of the said mechanism,
because they cover not only the right to life and integrity of the members of the
communities of the Jiguamiandó and of the Curvaradó, but they also affect rights such as to
property, to participation, and to prior consultation.
28.
In view of the above, the State considered that, in this matter, based on the
principle of subsidiarity, the provisional measures should be lifted because it had
demonstrated that, at the domestic level, there were mechanisms to coordinate and
implement measures of protection in favor of the members of the communities of the
Jiguamiandó and of the Curvaradó, including those who are beneficiaries of the provisional
measures.
29.
In this regard, on the instruction of the Court in plenary, on July 4, 2012, the State
was asked to present detailed information on various aspects and, subsequently, the InterAmerican Commission and the representatives of the beneficiaries were asked to submit
their observations (supra having seen paragraph 7). Based on the said information and
observations (infra considering paragraphs 30 to 44), the Court will rule on the State’s
request that the measures be lifted. To this end, the Court finds it useful to refer,
separately, to each of the aspects on which the Court asked Colombia to provide
information. It will then refer to the observations of the Inter-American Commission and of
the representatives of the beneficiaries.
E.1.
Information provided by the State
E.1.1. Existence of measures of protection ordered by national and international
instances in favor of the beneficiaries of the provisional measures
30.
Specifically, the State indicated that it had put in place protection measures by
means of public policies implemented by different government agencies aimed at improving
and resolving the situation of the displaced population in general, including the communities
of Afro-descendants and, in particular, the members of the communities of the Jiguamiandó
and of the Curvaradó. These public policies derive from Decree Law 4635 of 2011, which
“ordered measures of attention, assistance, […] integral reparation, […] and land restitution
to the victims belonging to Black, Afro-Colombian, Raizal and Palenquero communities,”
and which is regulated by Law 1448 of June 10, 2011, entitled "Victims and Land Restitution
Act.” Decree Law 4635 mentions the adoption of “special measures of protection for the
rights to life, security, freedom and integrity for the communities in a situation of special or
extreme risk.” In this way, “the competent authorities [must adopt], by the formulation of
the national protection program, differentiated individual and collective measures of
comprehensive protection of an ethnic, age- and gender-based nature, according to the
level of risk assessed in each case,” when the communities or their members are
“threatened with human rights violations and infringements of international humanitarian
law.” In addition, the public policies also related to Law 70 of 1993, under which the State
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