Chapter III. Of the Fundamental Constitutional Rights, Guarantees and Duties
Article 19
Through the organs and authorities established within it, this Constitution ensures and guarantees to all people the following directly applicable rights:
- The right to life as well as physical and mental integrity.The death penalty, torture, and degrading forms of punishment to mental and physical integrity are prohibited.
- The right to personality. Every person has the right to free development of their personality, within the limits required to respect the legal order as well as the dignity and rights of all other people.
- The rights of boys, girls, and adolescents to respect for their integrity as well as their moral, physical, psychic and sexual development. Additionally, they have the right to be treated according to their level of maturity and granted progressive autonomy in the issues that affect them.The care of boys, girls, and adolescents is a right of the parents or of the people that care for them, according to the law.
It is a responsibility of the State, the family, and the community to grant the necessary protection in order for them to exercise their rights. The law will establish a system of protection and guarantees for the rights of boys, girls, and adolescents;
- Equality before the law. In Chile there are no privileged persons or groups. In Chiles there are no slaves and he who steps on Chilean territory is free.No person, authority, group, or even the law can establish arbitrary differences. No person can be negatively discriminated against due to their race, skin color, sex, gender, language, religion, opinion, public beliefs, disability, economic and social position, birth, or any other condition;
- Men and women are equal before the law and in the enjoyment and exercise of their rights. It is an obligation of the State to promote equality, adopting the legislative and administrative means to eliminate all forms of discrimination that affect equality.
- Equal juridical protection in the exercise of rights during investigation or judgement by the State.
- Every person has the right to justice and to be heard by tribunals.
- Every person has the right to a trial. Every sentence from an organization that exercises jurisdiction must base itself on a legally conducted process that features the guarantees of an investigation and a procedure adjusted to the law, justice, and especially to constitutional rights.
- No person can be investigated nor processed without their knowledge or without constant official documentation of the condition. Every person has the right to reparation or compensation if they are absolved or dismissed in these investigations or processes, or if the process does not follow proper legal procedures.
- All persons have the right to legal defense in the form signaled by the law and no authority or individual may impede, restrict or perturb the intervention of a legal expert, if it is formally required. With respect to the members of the Armed Forces and the Public Order and Security Forces, this right is guided, in matters concerning administrative and disciplinary issues, according to the norms pertaining to their respective statutes.
- The law will arbitrate the means to provide assistance and judicial defense to those who are not able to procure it themselves. The law will distinguish the cases and establish the form in which natural persons that are victims of a crime will be eligible for free legal assistance and defense in order to exercise the penal actions recognized by this Constitution and the laws.
- Every person accused of a crime has the non-renounceable right to be assisted by a defense attorney provided by the State, if a person does not name one, the State will name one at the opportunity provided by the law.
- No person may be investigated nor judged by special commissions, but only by the prosecutor or tribunal indicated by the law for the case, which must be established prior to the perpetration of the act.
- The law cannot presume the penal responsibility as a right.
- No crime will be punished with a different punishment than the punishment indicated by the law and promulgated prior to the perpetration of the crime, unless a new law favors the party affected by the crime.
- No law may establish punishments without the conduct they are meant to punish being expressly and completely described.
- Every person investigated, accused, denounced, or formally charged has the right to the presumption of innocence and cannot be treated as guilty nor exposed publically to be guilty, until they have been proven guilty. Any contravention of this norm can be challenged in court in order to obtain sanctions and reparations.
- No person may be sanctioned by a punishment that is not proportional to the conduct punished or to the judicial good affected; nor may a person be newly judged for a matter already known or resolved judicially.
- The respect and protection of private life and the honor of persons and their families, establishing damages of either of these judicial goods as reparable.All people have the right to the protection of their personal information. The law will regulate the treatment of personal data and the sanctions that will occur in the case of noncompliance or when such data is made vulnerable;
- The inviolability of the home and of every form of communication and private documentation. The home and workplace may be raided, personal objects may be seized, and communications and private documents may be intercepted, opened, copied, or registered only in the cases and forms expressly determined by the law; additionally, such acts may only be committed by the persons and departments expressly determined by the law. Such interventions must have judicial backing and the affected persons must receive reparations if the investigations are revealed to have been unnecessary or disproportionate. The people and institutions that infringe on this right will personally and jointly answer for the damage caused;
- The liberty of conscience, the right to conscientious objection, and the right for the manifestation of all beliefs as well as the exercise of all cults that do not oppose the law.Religious confessions may erect and conserve temples as well as their dependencies under the conditions set by the law and ordinances.
The churches, confessions, and religious institutions of any cult will have the rights established and recognized by the actual laws in force with respect to their assets. The temples and their dependencies used exclusively for cult purposes are exempt from tax contributions;
- The right to personal liberty and to individual security.In consequence:
- Every person has the right to reside and remain in any place within the Republic, to travel from one part to another, and to enter and exit their territory within the limits established by the law and always without the interference of third parties;
- No person may be deprived of their personal liberty nor may their liberty be restricted except in cases and in forms established by the Constitution and the laws;
- No person may be investigated, arrested, or detained except by order of a public authority expressly issued according to the law and after said information or order has been communicated in a legal form. However, a person caught in the act may be detained with the restriction that they must stand before a competent judge within the next twenty-four hours and be allowed to send notice to a person indicated by the detainee.If the authority should arrest or detain a person, it must notify a competent judge and give the judge access to the detainee within forty-eight hours. The judge may issue a public and legally based resolution to extend this period to five days, or up to ten days in the case that acts classified as terrorist acts will be investigated.
- No person may be arrested or detained, or subjected to preventative imprisonment except in their home or in public places designed for this purpose and within the bounds of the law.Those in charge of prisons may not permit the entry of any arrestee, detainee, accused person, or prisoner without leaving documentary proof of the corresponding order, which emanates from a legal authority and is available in a public registry.
No miscommunication may impede the person charged with overseeing the detention facility from visiting an arrestee, detainee, accused person, or prisoner within the facility. The person charged with overseeing the detention facility is obligated, whenever an arrestee or detainee requests, to transmit a copy of a detention order to a competent judge, to request that he be given said copy, or to give the arrestee or detainee a certificate noting his having detained that individual if this requirement was omitted at the time of arrest;
- Liberty of the defendant will proceed unless preventative imprisonment or detention are considered necessary by the judge in order to allow investigations or to protect the security of the victim or society, which requires an immediate, legally based and public resolution. Preventative imprisonment or detention are transitory restrictions on liberty and may not exceed six months. The determination of their time limit may not refer to any punishment. The law will establish the requirements and modes of obtaining it.
- During criminal proceedings a defendant or accused person is not obligated to testify under oath regarding his or her own acts; neither can they be obligated to make a declaration counter to themselves, their ancestors, descendants, spouse or other persons in the cases and circumstances indicated by the law;
- Confiscation of property will not be permitted with the exception of confiscation in the cases established by the law; however, confiscation will be permitted in cases of illicit associations.
- Neither the loss or suspension of welfare rights nor the loss of political rights cannot be applied as a sanction, with the exception of the permissions outlined within article 17 of this Constitution.
- Every person that receives a judgement of acquittal, is definitively dismissed, or proves to have had their rights violated during the investigation and proceedings against them will have the right to reparation or compensation by the State or by the persons responsible for the property or moral damages suffered by them. The declaration of a competent tribunal, as well as compensation will be judicially determined in a brief, summary process and the evidence will be fully assessed;
- The right to live in an environment free of contamination. It is the duty of the State to ensure this right is protected and to oversee the preservation of nature.The law will establish specific restrictions on the exercise of certain rights or liberties in order to protect the environment;
- The right to live in a shelter with the basic material conditions and access to basic services as established in the law
- The right to the protection of health.The State guarantees the free and equal access to the promotion, protection, and recuperation of health and the rehabilitation of the individual.
Likewise, the State is charged with the coordination and control of actions related to health.
It is a preferential right of the State to guarantee the functioning, and quality of a public health system, partially supported by obligatory contributions from users that are proportional to their incomes. The performance of health services provided by welfare institutions will be regulated by the law, which will guarantee the availability and quality of these services as well as the obligations that may be established to cover these services.
Every person will have the right to choose, without being negatively discriminated against, the system of health they wish to belong to, be it private or public;
- The right to education.The objective of education is the development of the person during the distinct stages of life. Access to the formal system at its distinct levels will be guaranteed by the State.
Parents or parental guardians have the preferential right and duty to educate their children. The State has the duty to grant special protection for the exercise of the right to education, making available the educational establishments necessary for the right to be realized.
It is obligatory for the State to promote early childhood education, to finance a free system starting at the medio menor level in order to ensure access to it and higher levels. Kindergarten is obligatory as it is a requirement for entry into basic education.
Basic education and secondary education are obligatory, requiring the State to finance a free system to achieve that goal and ensure access to basic and secondary education for the entire population. In the case of secondary education, this system, in accordance with the law, will extend until a person reaches the age of 21. Higher education will also be free and provided by State establishments or within those private institutions allowed for by the law. The law may establish fees for the administrative costs generated by each student as well as subsidies for those who require assistance in order to pay the fees.
The State is also charged with fostering the development and quality of education, culture, scientific investigation and technological innovation, artistic creation, and the protection and growth of the cultural patrimony of the nation.
It is the duty of the community to contribute to the development and improvement of education;
The State recognizes the distinct forms of education of the indigenous peoples within the framework of the general system of education outlined within this article;
- The liberty of teaching is inherent in the right to education and includes the right to open, organize and maintain educational establishments within the norms that the Constitution and the laws establish and under the supervision of the corresponding ministries.The liberty of teaching has no other limitations than those established by the law.
Officially recognized teaching may not be oriented by a specific political or party tendency nor serve to diffuse such a tendency; the former shall not affect civic education, which must be obligatorily taught in all educational establishments
Parents have the right to choose the educational establishment their children attend.
A law will establish the minimum requirements that must be met at each level of education, basic and secondary, in addition to indicating the objective norms to be generally applied in order to permit the State to ensure compliance. Said law will also establish the requirements for official recognition of educational establishments at all levels;
- The freedom of expression, to opinion and to inform, without prior censorship in any form or through any means; the former may not inhibit the ability to respond to crimes or abuses committed in the exercise of these rights, in conformity with the law.In no case may the law establish a State or private monopoly on the means of social communication, consistently guaranteeing the existence of pluralism in the editorship and information provided by the means of communication.
All natural or juridical persons offended or unjustly referred to by a means of social communication will have the right to have their declaration or rectification freely dispersed according to the conditions determined by law by the means of social communication in which the information was emitted without affecting the legal actions the person affected has the right to.
All natural or juridical persons have the right to found, edit, and maintain means of communication under the conditions established by the law.
The State, universities and other persons or entities that the law determines may establish, operate, and maintain television stations or other means of communication.
There will be an autonomous Consejo National de Television (National Television Council) with juridical personhood, charged with the oversight of the proper functioning of this mode of communication. A law will indicate the organization, function, and attributes of the council.
The law will regulate a system of qualifications for the exhibition of cinematographic productions;
- The right of persons to freely inform themselves and the right to access information available within public organizations without limits beyond those established for reserved or secret information in article 8 of this Constitution;
- The right to participation in public affairs, directly, through associations, or through representatives in accordance with the legal order.The organizations of the State must establish mechanisms of public participation in the generation and evaluation of their activities in ways and under conditions determined by the law;
- The right to peaceful assembly without prior permissions and without arms.Meetings in plazas, streets and other public spaces will be conducted according to the law;
- The right to present petitions to authorities, regarding any issue of public or private interest without any other limitation beyond doing so in a respectful and convenient manner. All natural and juridical persons possess this right regardless of their condition and legal status. The law will regulate the form and conditions for the exercise of this right;
- The right of association without prior permission.To enjoy juridical personhood, associations must constitute themselves in conformity with the law.
No person may be obligated to join an organization, except those that, according to the law, are required to perform a profession.
Organizations contrary to the legal order are prohibited;
- The free exercise of political rights.People are free to participate in political parties or other types of political organizations created in accordance with the law regardless of the contents of article 13 of this Constitution.
Parties are associations that contribute to the functioning of the democratic system and the formation of the people’s political voluntarism; their legal order, functioning, ends, and structure are regulated by an organic constitutional law. People have the right to receive civic education from the formal education system as well as from the social and political organizations in which they freely participate.
The Political Constitution guarantees political and social pluralism. Parties, movements or other forms of organization whose acts or conduct do not respect the basic principles of the democratic and constitutional order, seek the establishment of an autocratic system, as well as those that engage, incite or propose violence are unconstitutional. It is the duty of the Constitutional Tribunal to declare their unconstitutionality;
- The right to work and legal protection of the right to work.All people have the right to freely contract and the liberty to work for just compensation.
Any discrimination not based on the capacity or suitability of a person, especial with regards to salary differences between men and women, is prohibited, with the exception that the law may require Chilean nationality or age limits in certain cases.
No class of work may be prohibited, except that which opposes the law or public health or that which demands the national interest as declared by a law. No legal norm nor any public authority may demand affiliation to an organization or an entity as a requirement to develop a specific activity or engage in a specific form of labor, nor may renunciation of affiliation be demanded in order to maintain a specific activity or a specific form of labor. The law will determine the professions that require a high school or a university degree and the other conditions that must be met in order to exercise the profession. Professional schools constituted in accordance with the law and that are related to these professions will be empowered to know of the complaints made against the ethical conduct of their members. Against their resolutions, one may appeal to the respective Court of Appeals. Unassociated professionals will be judged by the special tribunals established by a law.
The right of unions to collective bargaining, except in cases in which the law expressly prohibits negotiation. The law will establish the modes of collective negotiation and the adequate procedures to achieve a just and pacific outcome through them. The law will indicate the cases in which collective bargaining must submit to obligatory arbitration, which will correspond to special tribunals of experts whose organization and attributes will be established by the law.
The right to strike within the right to collective bargaining in accordance with the law. Striking will be prohibited for workers who work within institutions, no matter their nature, purpose, or function, that attend to services of public utility or whose paralysis would cause serious harm to the health or the supply of the population or national security. The law will establish procedures to determine the institutions whose workers will be prohibited from striking under this exception and the eventual sanctions that will accompany their noncompliance;
- Admission to all the public functions and jobs, without other requirements beyond those imposed by the Constitution and the laws;
- The right to social security.The State guarantees the access of all persons to the enjoyment of the benefits necessary to lead a life of dignity in the case of retirement or loss of work, whether they are provided by public or private institutions. The law may establish obligatory contributions in proportion to the incomes of the affiliates.
The State will supervise the exercise of the right to social security as well as the proper functioning of lending institutions.
Every person will have the right to choose, without negative discrimination, the system of pensions to which they wish to join, be it private or public;
- The right to unionize in the cases and forms indicated by the law. Union affiliation will always be mandatory.Union organizations will enjoy juridical personhood upon registering their statutes and constitutive acts in the form and conditions established by the law;
- The equal distribution of taxes in proportion to incomes or in the progression or form set by the law as well as the equal distribution of the remaining public offices.Tributes collected, no matter their nature, become part of the patrimony of the State.
The law may authorize that certain tributes can be created by the State for the purposes of national defense, education, and health. Likewise, the law may authorize that those that tax activities or property that have a clear local or regional identification may be applied within the guidelines indicated by the same law, by communal or regional authorities for the financing of productive or human development projects;
- The right to develop any economic activity, respecting the legal norms that regulate it.The State and its organs may develop business activities or participate in those previously established by the law. In this case, these activities will be subject to the common legislation applicable to the particulars notwithstanding the exceptions justified and established by the law;
- The liberty to acquire ownership of all classes of property, except those that nature has made common to all human beings or that should belong to the entire nation given that the law declares it to be so. The foregoing, without prejudice to that which is prescribed elsewhere in other precepts of this Constitution.An organic constitutional law, when demanded by national interest and the common good, may establish limitations on or requirements for the acquisition of certain types of property;
- The right to ownership in its diverse species over all classes of corporeal and intellectual property.Only the law may establish the form of acquiring, using, enjoying, and discharging property. Property must serve the common good, and the law may establish the limitations and obligations that are derived from its social function when the general interests of the nation, national security, public utility and sanitation, the conservation of the patrimony and environmental sustainability demand.
In no case may any person be deprived of their ownership of property that they own, nor may they be deprived of any of the essential attributes or special powers of ownership, except by virtue of a general or special law that authorizes expropriation for the purpose of public utility or national interest as qualified by the legislator. A person who experiences expropriation may challenge the legality of the act of expropriation before ordinary tribunals and will always have the right to compensation for the harm caused, which will be set through a common agreement or through a sentence dictated according to the law by said tribunals.
The physical taking of expropriated property will require prior payment of the entirety of the compensation, which, in the case of disagreement, will be provisionally determined by experts in the form indicated by the law. In the case of a complaint regarding the origin of the expropriation, the judge may, with the merit of the antecedents invoked, decree the suspension of the taking.
The State has absolute, exclusive, inalienable and imprescriptible ownership of all mines, understood to include guano deposits, metalliferous sands, salt flats, the carbon and hydro carbon deposits as well as the other fossil substances, with the exception of superficial clays, no obstante the ownership of natural or juridical persons over the land upon which the mines or deposits are located. The surface structures will be subject to the obligations and limitations that the law indicates to facilitate the exploration, exploitation, and the beneficiation of said mines.
The law will determine which substances of those previously mentioned in the preceding clause, with the exception of liquid or gaseous hydrocarbons, may be objects of exploration or exploitation concessions. Concessions will always be constituted by a judicial resolution and will have the duration, grant the rights, and imply the obligations expressed by the law, a law that will have the character of an organic constitutional law. Mining concessions obligate the owner to develop the activity necessary to satisfy the public interest that justifies its granting. Its regime of protection will be established by said law, will tend to directly or indirectly comply with this obligation and it will contemplate causes of expiration in cases of noncompliance or in cases of a simple termination of the ownership of a concession. In any case, said causes and effects must be established at the moment the concession is granted.
It will be the exclusive competence of the ordinary tribunals of justice to declare the expiration of such concessions. The controversies produced with respect to the expiration or termination of ownership of a concession will be resolved by them; and in the case of expiration, the affected party may request that the justice system issue a declaration to sustain their right.
The ownership of a title holder over a mining concession is protected by the constitutional guarantee outlined within this number.
The exploration, exploitation and the beneficiation of the deposits that contain substances that are not susceptible to concession may be exercised directly by the State or by its businesses, through administrative concessions, or through special operations contracts that meet the requirements and under the conditions that the President of the Republic sets in each case through supreme decree. This norm will also apply to the deposits of any type that exist in maritime waters under the national jurisdiction and to those located in part or entirely in areas that, according to the law, are determined to have importance for national security.
Bodies of water in any of their states are national property for public use. The rights of particular entities with regards to these waters, recognized or constituted in conformity with the law, will grant ownership to title holders over them. The law will regulate the procedure to constitute, recognize, exercise, and terminate the rights and concessions granted to particular entities;
- The liberty to create and disseminate the arts as well as the rights of authors over their intellectual and artistic creations of any type for the period of time indicated by the law, which will not be less than the lifetime of the right holder.The right of the author includes ownership of the works and other rights, such as paternity, the edition, and the integrity of the work, all in accordance with the law.
Intellectual property over patents, commercial brands, models, technological processes and other analog creations are also guaranteed for the time period established by the law.
The prescriptions of the second, third, fourth, and fifth clauses of the previous article will also be applicable to intellectual and artistic creations as well as to industrial property;
- The cultural and linguistic rights of indigenous peoples and the right to their cultural, material, and immaterial patrimony in accordance with the law. It is the responsibility of the State to develop these rights. The preservation and diffusion of the languages of the indigenous peoples will be established in the law, and;
- The security that the rights guaranteed by this Constitution may not be affected in their essence.
Article 20
Whoever expects to have their rights as established in this Constitution violated by the arbitrary or illegal acts of any person or institution, be it private or public, may request to obtain effective protection in the face of that vulnerability and the reestablishment of the right violated before any ordinary tribunal of first instance, notwithstanding the other rights that may jurisdictionally impeded. The resolution of this tribunal will be appealable to the Constitutional Tribunal.
The organic constitutional law of the Constitutional Tribunal will regulate the exercise of this constitutional action of rights guardianship.
Article 21
Notwithstanding that which is outlined in article 20, any individual under investigation, arrested, detained or imprisoned for an infraction of that which is in the Constitution and the laws may come on his or her own behalf, or for any other of their name, before the magistrate indicated by the law, in order for the latter to determine whether legal requirements have been met and to immediately adopt the measures deemed necessary to reestablish the rule of law and ensure the protection of the affected person.
This magistrate may order the individual to be brought to them and the magistrate’s decree will be precisely obeyed by all who are in charge of the investigations, prisons, or detention facilities. Informed of the background, the magistrate will order that the detainee be released immediately, demand that legal defects be repaired, or the magistrate will place the individual at the disposition of a competent judge, proceeding quickly and summarily and correcting these errors or taking account of who is responsible for correcting them.
The same recourse will be available in the same form to all persons that illegally suffer any other form of deprivation, violation or threat to their rights to personal liberty and individual security. In such cases, the respective magistrate will dictate the means, as indicated in the prior clauses, that he expects to be conducive to reestablishing the rule of law and ensuring the protection of the affected person’s rights.
Article 22
All inhabitants of the republic must respect Chile, its national emblems, and the emblems of its indigenous peoples.
The national flag, the coat of arms of the republic and the national anthem are emblems of the nation.
Chileans have the fundamental right of honoring their homeland, of defending Chile’s sovereignty and the essential values of the Chilean tradition and of Chile’s indigenous peoples.
Military service, taxes and other personal duties imposed by the law are legally binding in the terms and forms established by the law.
Chileans in possession of arms must be registered in the military registries if they are not legally exempt.
All people have the duty to protect, promote, and respect fundamental rights and human rights; to protect and conserve nature as well as the historical and cultural patrimony.
