SEPARATE OPINION OF JUDGE A.A. CANÇADO TRINDADE 1. The present case of the "Street Children" is truly paradigmatic, to the extent that, besides portraying a real situation of day-to-day life in Latin America, it discloses that human conscience has attained a degree of evolution that has rendered it possible to impart justice by means of the protection of the rights of the marginalized or excluded, in granting to them, as to every human being, direct access to an international judicial instance in order to vindicate their rights, as the true complaining party. The human being, even in the most adverse conditions, emerges as subject of the International Law of Human Rights, endowed with full international juridicoprocedural capacity. The present Judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the case of the "Street Children" not only resolves a concrete case as to reparations, but also contributes to raise the standards of human behaviour with regard to the dispossessed. Cases such as the present one, added to others that reveal a high intensity of human suffering, such as, e.g., that of Paniagua Morales and Others, further disclose that the violent death of the beloved ones can have - as it has in fact occurred - devastating effects on the close relatives and disrupting effects on the respective family units. 2. These cases, in my view, make it quite clear that the reparations of human rights violations ought to be determined as from the gravity of the facts and their impact upon the integrality of the personality of the victims, - both the direct (the murdered persons) and the indirect ones (their surviving close relatives). In voting in favour of the adoption, by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, of the present Judgment on reparations in the case of the "Street Children", I feel thus obliged to present my personal thoughts on the matter. They are focussed, mainly, on three elements which, surprisingly, have been insufficiently dwelt upon in contemporary international case-law and doctrine, as well as in the practice of pleadings of litigators in the international contentieux to date, in the matter of reparations for violations of human rights. 3. I refer particularly to the trilogy, formed by victimization, human suffering, and rehabilitation of the victims, - to be considered as from the integrality of the personality of the victims. In my understanding, there is pressing need for greater reflection on this trilogy, in order to understand the true meaning and scope of reparations in the present context of the protection of the rights of the human being. It is not sufficient to keep in mind the basic distinction - nowadays widely recognized - between reparations and one of their forms, indemnizations. One ought to identify the real meaning of the term reparations in the domain of the International Law of Human Rights (cf. pars. 40-42, infra). The determination of the forms, amounts and extent of reparations, in my view cannot prescind from a prior comprehension of the real sense of human suffering. 4. The personal thoughts which I see it fit to develop in this Separate Opinion are not meant to submit general criteria for the settlement of problems pertaining to reparations due to the victims of human rights violations, such as those raised in the present case of the "Street Children". In warning as to the risks - so common nowadays - of a reductionist approach to the matter (with an undue emphasis on compensations in the form of simple indemnizations), my purpose is rather to draw attention to the need to contribute to secure the prevalence of superior values which are at issue, from the perspective of the centrality of the position of the victims, in their integrality, as well as to the importance of securing the measures of rehabilitation of these latter.

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