Pobreza, capacidades y medición. El intento de Colombia de medir las capacidades a través de una evaluación indirecta de los medios de vida: el SISBEN

Este artículo analiza dos de los problemas que ha creado el uso del SISBEN como medio para seleccionar a los beneficiarios de los programas sociales del Estado. El primer problema es la no inclusión en la encuesta del SISBEN de un factor que tiene un importante impacto en la habilidad de las familias de crear capacidades para salir de la pobreza: las enfermedades crónicas. El segundo es la exclusión de los trabajadores pobres de la mayoría de los programas de bienestar. Se argumenta que esos problemas tienen serias implicaciones desde el punto de vista constitucional. En primer lugar, implican una violación del principio de igualdad material reconocido en la Constitución colombiana. En segundo lugar, significan una limitación sospechosa del derecho a la salud de la gente pobre, pues el régimen subsidiado de salud solamente afilia a aquellos en las situaciones mayores de pobreza de acuerdo con la clasificación del SISBEN.This paper analyzes two of the problems that the SISBEN as a mean for the selection of the beneficiaries of social and welfare programs in Colombia, has created. The first one is the non- inclusion in the proxy means test used by the SISBEN of one factor which has an important impact on families' ability to create capabilities in order to get out of poverty: the existence of severe or chronic conditions. The second one is the exclusion of the poor working population from most welfare benefits. It is argued that those problems have serious implications in constitutional terms. First, they imply infringements of the right to substantive equality recognized by the Colombian Constitution. Second, they also entail a suspicious limitation of the right of poor people to health care, given that the subsidized health care system only accepts people in the poorest conditions according to the SISBEN's categorization

Pobreza, capacidades y medición. El intento de Colombia de medir las capacidades a través de una evaluación indirecta de los medios de vida: el SISBEN

Este artículo analiza dos de los problemas que ha creado el uso del SISBEN como medio para seleccionar a los beneficiarios de los programas sociales del Estado. El primer problema es la no inclusión en la encuesta del SISBEN de un factor que tiene un importante impacto en la habilidad de las familias de crear capacidades para salir de la pobreza: las enfermedades crónicas. El segundo es la exclusión de los trabajadores pobres de la mayoría de los programas de bienestar. Se argumenta que esos problemas tienen serias implicaciones desde el punto de vista constitucional. En primer lugar, implican una violación del principio de igualdad material reconocido en la Constitución colombiana. En segundo lugar,  significan una limitación sospechosa del derecho a la salud de la gente pobre, pues el régimen subsidiado de salud solamente afilia a aquellos en las situaciones mayores de pobreza de acuerdo con la clasificación del SISBEN

Governing the poor in contemporary Colombia

This thesis sheds light on the complexities, particularities, contradictions, ruptures and continuities of the government of poverty in neoliberal times in Colombia. Drawing on the analytical perspective of governmentality and through a close reading of legal documents and policy papers, the thesis explores the ways in which poor populations are governed in neoliberal times. The inquiry is situated at the crossroad of debates about the strategies and effects of welfare reforms pursuant to neoliberal governmentality, discourses and mechanism of poverty alleviations spread in the Global South since the 1990s, and new directions of development discourses. The investigation is conducted through an examination of three distinct but inter-related scenarios of poverty regulation: a conditional cash transfers programme directly managed by the Colombian Presidency involved in counterinsurgent strategies, a constitutional amendment which entrenched austerity rules in the legal system with the aim of preventing the judicial enforceability of social and economic rights, and a general strike in the richest port but poorest city of Colombia (Buenaventura) where violence is deployed to neutralise the political agency of poor populations in order to enable the expansion of the port. The focus of attention is on the discourses, technologies, techniques and rationalities of government deployed in each instance, as well as the heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory subjectivities that programmes of government attempt to constitute. At the core of this thesis is the poverty-(in)security nexus. The chapters illustrate how managing and neutralising the agency of the poor has been central to securing the social, political and economic order that neoliberal governmentality seeks to create. The government of the poor is therefore a project of security: on the one hand, it endeavours to secure an order based on competition, stability and investor’s security. On the other, the 7 management of the poor relies on a logic of security whereby coercive and non-coercive strategies are articulated. Yet coercive and authoritarian technologies prevail, confirming the authoritarian and coercive nature of neoliberalism. Hence, in contrast with the emancipatory language of current poverty alleviation discourses and their defence of ‘softer’ environmental technologies, in Colombia the government of poverty in recent decades has been intensely invasive and coercive. Overall, the thesis aims to ‘problematise’ the manner in which poverty is produced as a ‘problem’ in neoliberal development discourses and “denaturalise” our conceptions and assumptions about it

Los derechos de la naturaleza entre la emancipación y el disciplinamiento

This article aims to discuss how the rights of nature have been juridified and disciplined by Colombian judges. For these purposes, we used a two components methodology: discourse analysis of court rulings and doctrinal examination of the origin and pillars of the rights of nature movement. Throughout the text, we analyze how their reading through the lenses of traditional legal notions such as property and common welfare limits the transformative aspirations that inspire the movement of the rights of nature.El objetivo de este artículo es discutir cómo los derechos de la naturaleza han sido juridificados y disciplinados por los jueces colombianos. Para lograrlo, utilizamos una metodología con dos componentes: un análisis del discurso de sentencias judiciales y un examen de doctrina y teoría sobre el origen y los pilares del movimiento de los derechos de la naturaleza. A lo largo del texto analizamos cómo su lectura desde nociones tradicionales jurídicas como propiedad y bien común limita las aspiraciones transformadoras que inspiran el movimiento de los derechos de la naturaleza

Clonal chromosomal mosaicism and loss of chromosome Y in elderly men increase vulnerability for SARS-CoV-2

The pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19) had an estimated overall case fatality ratio of 1.38% (pre-vaccination), being 53% higher in males and increasing exponentially with age. Among 9578 individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 in the SCOURGE study, we found 133 cases (1.42%) with detectable clonal mosaicism for chromosome alterations (mCA) and 226 males (5.08%) with acquired loss of chromosome Y (LOY). Individuals with clonal mosaic events (mCA and/or LOY) showed a 54% increase in the risk of COVID-19 lethality. LOY is associated with transcriptomic biomarkers of immune dysfunction, pro-coagulation activity and cardiovascular risk. Interferon-induced genes involved in the initial immune response to SARS-CoV-2 are also down-regulated in LOY. Thus, mCA and LOY underlie at least part of the sex-biased severity and mortality of COVID-19 in aging patients. Given its potential therapeutic and prognostic relevance, evaluation of clonal mosaicism should be implemented as biomarker of COVID-19 severity in elderly people. Among 9578 individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 in the SCOURGE study, individuals with clonal mosaic events (clonal mosaicism for chromosome alterations and/or loss of chromosome Y) showed an increased risk of COVID-19 lethality

The judicial construction of economic, social and cultural rights in the case of the constitutional court of colombia

The paper argues that the Constitutional Court of Colombia has understood economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) from the perspective of a traditional theory of rights according to which they are achievements that cannot be overridden by conflicting public interests. As a result, the Court has favored a categorical formula of adjudication according to which judicial activity focuses on the definition of the scope of the right. Competing public interests may be taken into account in order to establish the scope of the right, but once that scope is defined, it cannot be overridden by conflicting public interests. Therefore, the conception of ESCR that the Court of Colombia has adopted differs from the South African conception. The South African Constitutional Court regards ESCR as protective shields against conflicting governmental interests. This theory allows for positions of rights to be balanced against countervailing governmental interests. Given the tensions that these theories of rights and formulas of adjudication create in terms of judicial discretion and democratic debate, some intermediate formulas have been proposed. In the final part of the paper, these proposals are analyzed and some suggestions are made that contribute to the debate

Pobreza, capacidades y medición. El intento de Colombia de medir las capacidades a través de una evaluación indirecta de los medios de vida: el SISBEN

Este artículo analiza dos de los problemas que ha creado el uso del SISBEN como medio para seleccionar a los beneficiarios de los programas sociales del Estado. El primer problema es la no inclusión en la encuesta del SISBEN de un factor que tiene un importante impacto en la habilidad de las familias de crear capacidades para salir de la pobreza: las enfermedades crónicas. El segundo es la exclusión de los trabajadores pobres de la mayoría de los programas de bienestar. Se argumenta que esos problemas tienen serias implicaciones desde el punto de vista constitucional. En primer lugar, implican una violación del principio de igualdad material reconocido en la Constitución colombiana. En segundo lugar, significan una limitación sospechosa del derecho a la salud de la gente pobre, pues el régimen subsidiado de salud solamente afilia a aquellos en las situaciones mayores de pobreza de acuerdo con la clasificación del SISBEN.This paper analyzes two of the problems that the SISBEN as a mean for the selection of the beneficiaries of social and welfare programs in Colombia, has created. The first one is the non- inclusion in the proxy means test used by the SISBEN of one factor which has an important impact on families' ability to create capabilities in order to get out of poverty: the existence of severe or chronic conditions. The second one is the exclusion of the poor working population from most welfare benefits. It is argued that those problems have serious implications in constitutional terms. First, they imply infringements of the right to substantive equality recognized by the Colombian Constitution. Second, they also entail a suspicious limitation of the right of poor people to health care, given that the subsidized health care system only accepts people in the poorest conditions according to the SISBEN's categorization

La construcción judicial de los derechos económicos, sociales y culturales en el caso de la Corte Constitucional de Colombia

The paper argues that the Constitutional Court of Colombia has understood economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) from the perspective of a traditional theory of rights according to which they are achievements that cannot be overridden by conflicting public interests. As a result, the Court has favored a categorical formula of adjudication according to which judicial activity focuses on the definition of the scope of the right. Competing public interests may be taken into account in order to establish the scope of the right, but once that scope is defined, it cannot be overridden by conflicting public interests. Therefore, the conception of ESCR that the Court of Colombia has adopted differs from the South African conception. The South African Constitutional Court regards ESCR as protective shields against conflicting governmental interests. This theory allows for positions of rights to be balanced against countervailing governmental interests. Given the tensions that these theories of rights and formulas of adjudication create in terms of judicial discretion and democratic debate, some intermediate formulas have been proposed. In the final part of the paper, these proposals are analyzed and some suggestions are made that contribute to the debate

La construcción judicial de los derechos económicos, sociales y culturales en el caso de la Corte Constitucional de Colombia

The paper argues that the Constitutional Court of Colombia has understood economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) from the perspective of a traditional theory of rights according to which they are achievements that cannot be overridden by conflicting public interests. As a result, the Court has favored a categorical formula of adjudication according to which judicial activity focuses on the definition of the scope of the right. Competing public interests may be taken into account in order to establish the scope of the right, but once that scope is defined, it cannot be overridden by conflicting public interests. Therefore, the conception of ESCR that the Court of Colombia has adopted differs from the South African conception. The South African Constitutional Court regards ESCR as protective shields against conflicting governmental interests. This theory allows for positions of rights to be balanced against countervailing governmental interests. Given the tensions that these theories of rights and formulas of adjudication create in terms of judicial discretion and democratic debate, some intermediate formulas have been proposed. In the final part of the paper, these proposals are analyzed and some suggestions are made that contribute to the debate