This case has been cited 1 times or more.
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2008-10-07 |
PUNO, CJ. |
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| This third sense of the right to security of person as a guarantee of government protection has been interpreted by the United Nations' Human Rights Committee[136] in not a few cases involving Article 9[137] of the ICCPR. While the right to security of person appears in conjunction with the right to liberty under Article 9, the Committee has ruled that the right to security of person can exist independently of the right to liberty. In other words, there need not necessarily be a deprivation of liberty for the right to security of person to be invoked. In Delgado Paez v. Colombia,[138] a case involving death threats to a religion teacher at a secondary school in Leticia, Colombia, whose social views differed from those of the Apostolic Prefect of Leticia, the Committee held, viz:The first sentence of article 9 does not stand as a separate paragraph. Its location as a part of paragraph one could lead to the view that the right to security arises only in the context of arrest and detention. The travaux préparatoires indicate that the discussions of the first sentence did indeed focus on matters dealt with in the other provisions of article 9. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in article 3, refers to the right to life, the right to liberty and the right to security of the person. These elements have been dealt with in separate clauses in the Covenant. Although in the Covenant the only reference to the right of security of person is to be found in article 9, there is no evidence that it was intended to narrow the concept of the right to security only to situations of formal deprivation of liberty. At the same time, States parties have undertaken to guarantee the rights enshrined in the Covenant. It cannot be the case that, as a matter of law, States can ignore known threats to the life of persons under their jurisdiction, just because that he or she is not arrested or otherwise detained. States parties are under an obligation to take reasonable and appropriate measures to protect them. An interpretation of article 9 which would allow a State party to ignore threats to the personal security of non-detained persons within its jurisdiction would render totally ineffective the guarantees of the Covenant.[139] (emphasis supplied) | |||||