Colombia
Practice Relating to Rule 29. Medical Transports
Colombia’s Circular on Fundamental Rules of IHL (1992) states that the protection due to the wounded and sick “also covers, as such, … medical transports”.
Colombia’s Basic Military Manual (1995) states that “attacks, misappropriation and destruction” of medical transports constitutes a “grave breach”.
Colombia’s Emblem Decree (1998) provides: “All Colombian authorities and persons must protect … transports of medicine, food and humanitarian aid in situations of armed conflict or natural disaster.”
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 transport “has attained customary status, mainly due to its impact on State practice and on conflicts in the last decades”.