Human Rights

The new Magna Charta has 350 articles, 98 more than the Constitution of 1961, out of which 116 are specifically dedicated to Duties, Human Rights and Guarantee, with a chapter on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples.

The achievements that are pointed out include, among others, the exclusion of the military justice's competence to process offences to human rights, the imprescriptibility of those offences, the prohibition of amnesty for agents of State involved in such offences and the obligation of the State to repair damages caused to the victims. It also prohibits the forced disappearance of persons, acknowledges the right of a healthy environment and establishes the figure of objection of conscience, whereby citizens may refuse to carry out activities against their own code of values, provided this does not violate the general principles of the Constitution.

The existence of indigenous peoples and communities is recognized, as well as their "rights by origin over the lands that ancestrally and traditionally they have occupied, which are necessary to develop and guarantee their ways of living," and whose delimitation shall be done in less than two years. Similarly, the State guarantees a representation of these peoples and communities before the deliberating organs of the federal and local entities where they are settled.