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8 SUR - Int'l J. on Hum Rts. 7 (2011)
Social Movements and the Constitutional Court: Legal Recognition of the Rights of Same-Sex Couples in Colombia

handle is hein.journals/surij8 and id is 7 raw text is: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL COURT: LEGAL RECOGNITION OF THE RIGHTS OF SAME-SEX COUPLES IN COLOMBIA' Mauricio Albarracfn Caballero 1 Introduction On December 23, 2009, the Colombian government declared a social state of emergency in order to confront the financial crisis in the health system. The decreed set of measures motivated patients, doctors, students, political parties, the media, and the general population to mobilize. All of these parties, including the national government, used the same terminology: the right to health. During the protests, two images grabbed my attention. The first was a banner held up by two patients, which read TUTELA:2 WE ARE ALIVE THANKS TO YOU. The other was a poster, reproduced by the thousands on flyers distributed in downtown Bogota during the protests, which read: Health is not a favor, it is a right.3 In both cases, citizens ascribed personal significance to a legal action or a constitutional right and used a common language to channel their discontent. Using the language of rights is not unique to social movements in Colombia, nor to countries in the Global South. Such terminology has also been used in the Global North, such as in the civil rights movement in the United States, or in recent cases like the Right to Work campaign carried out by unions in the United Kingdom to protest budget cuts made by David Cameron's administration. The use of terminology around rights is also not exclusive to progressive movements. Conservative movements that oppose a woman's freedom to have an abortion use language based on the right to life, and those who oppose the right of same-sex parents to adopt children formulate their arguments around children's right to have a father and a mother. During the last decade, many of the political demonstrations and social mobilizations in Colombia have been mediated by the language of rights. Furthermore, Notes to this text start on page 29. SUR-v.8-n.14-jun. 2011 -p.7-31 * 7