Colombia
Practice Relating to Rule 28. Medical Units
Colombia’s Circular on Fundamental Rules of IHL (1992) states that the protection due to the wounded and sick “also covers, as such, … medical establishments”.
Colombia’s Basic Military Manual (1995) states that “attacks, misappropriation and destruction” of medical units constitutes a “grave breach”.
Colombia’s Military Penal Code (1999) provides a prison sentence for “anyone who during military service and without proper cause … attacks hospitals or poorhouses which are properly marked”.
In 2007, in the
Constitutional Case No. C-291/07, the Plenary Chamber of Colombia’s Constitutional Court stated that the obligation in the 1977 Additional Protocol II to protect medical units “has attained customary status, mainly due to its impact on State practice and on conflicts in the last decades”.