Climate justice and internal displacement in Latin America

Lessons from the Mendoza Bohórquez and Niño de Mendoza case

Abstract

The article analyzes Judgment T-123/2024 of the Constitutional Court of Colombia, also known as the Mendoza Bohórquez and Niño de Mendoza Case, which inaugurates a new paradigm in Latin American constitutionalism by recognizing internal environmental displacement as a violation of fundamental rights. The decision transforms the climate protection deficit into a normative model of constitutional governance, structured around the tripod of state duties of prevention, response, and reparation. Based on a theoretical-analytical and interpretive-critical approach, the study examines how the Colombian Court turns an individual claim into a structural precedent that articulates climate justice, human dignity, and socio-environmental solidarity. The analysis demonstrates that the Constitutional Court redefines the role of the State in the face of the ecological crisis by integrating it as an agent of reconstruction and collective resilience, thus overcoming the traditional assistentialist paradigm. It concludes that the Mendoza Bohórquez and Niño de Mendoza Case (T-123/2024) marks a transition from a constitutionalism of omission to a constitutionalism of climate reconstruction, in which climate justice assumes a structuring function within the constitutional order and guides the formulation of public policies aimed at comprehensive reparation and resilient reconstruction of communities displaced by environmental factors in the Global South.