Introduction
One day in December 2014, just before the Christmas holidays, two taxis pull up in front of the Cundinamarca Administrative Court in Bogotá (Figure 1). Five young lawyers from the organisation Tierra Digna jump out, carrying boxes full of documents. They have come on behalf of three community councils from the department of Chocó, in order to file a complaint for tutela for the violation of Articles 1, 2, 7, 11, 13, 44, 49 and 366 of the Constitution, and for the violation of the fundamental rights to life, health, water, food, and territory. The plaintiffs, who all belong to Black communities living along the Atrato River, accuse 20 entities of the Colombian state of violating these rights. Their application is unusual in its form and content, as the tutela route is generally used in Colombia to defend individual rights and results in relatively short applications. The boxes of documents that accompany the lawyers’ request contain, amongst other things, the evidence pro...




