For many years, internally displaced people and civil society organizations had demanded protection measures from the Government without receiving an appropriate response. This had prompted hundreds of displaced persons to invoke the protection of the judiciary through the judicial remedy known as a tutela: a constitutionally established judicial action that citizens can bring before any judge to ensure the effective exercise of their human rights. By 2004, tribunals had received tutelas submitted by 1,150 displaced families, accumulated in a dossier by the Constitutional Court that led to a judgment declaring that the humanitarian emergency caused by forced displacement had created an unconstitutional state of affairs characterized by massive human rights violations associated with systemic failures in State assistance to displaced persons. Accordingly, the Court ordered the Government to adopt structural measures, a measure that has spawned a lengthy implementation process.