3 7. Six years ago, in another case before this Court, I pointed out precisely the necessity to consider the delict of forced disappearance of persons in the integrality of their multiple and interrelated aspects5. Such necessity ensues, in effect, from the rationale itself of the tipification of the delict referred to by the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons (1994), - ratified by Bolivia on 05.05.1999, - which defines it as a delict "continuing or permanent as long as the fate or whereabouts of the victim has not been determined" (Article III). Moreover, the aforementioned Convention warns that it is a specific and autonomous delict6, which constitutes a complex form of violation of human rights (with interrelated delictual facts). For this reason, it requires to be considered from a necessarily integral approach7. In the travaux préparatoires of that Convention, it was pointed out that the delict referred to "is permanent in so far as it is consummated not in an instantaneous form but rather in a permanent one and it is prolongued during all the time that the person remains disappeared"8, - what was duly reflected in Article III of the Convention (supra). 8. The same conception ensues from the United Nations Declaration on the Protection of All Persons against Forced Disappearances (1992), which, after stressing the gravity of the delict of forced disappearance of person (Article 1(1)), warns likewise that this latter ought to be "considered a permanent delict while its authors continue to hide the fate and the whereabouts of the disappeared person and while the facts have not been clarified" (Article 17(1)). One ought, thus, to have always in mind, as to the material aspect of the question dealt with herein, that the forced disappearance of persons constitutes, first, a complex form of violation of human rights; second, a particularly grave violation; and third, a continuing or permanent violation (until the destiny or whereabouts of the victim is established). 9. In my Separate Opinion in the case Blake versus Guatemala (merits, 1998), in identifying a décalage between the traditional law of treaties and the International Law of Human Rights (par. 16), I pondered that the former could not keep on not taking into account the element of intemporality proper of this latter (par. 21), and added that "it would not be possible, for example, to speak of limitations ratione temporis to the competence of an international tribunal (...) in relation to norms of general international law. (...) The opinio juris sive necessitatis (the subjective element of custom), as manifestation of the international juridical conscience, reveals nowadays much more vigour than the secular postulates of the law of treaties, when one comes to establish new legal regimes of protection of the human being against particularly grave violations of his rights" (par. 24). 5 . Cf. my Separate Opinion in the case Blake versus Guatemala (Preliminary Objections, 1996, paragraphs 3-4, 11-12 and 15). 6 . As expressly pointed out in the travaux préparatoires of the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons; cf. CIDH, Informe Anual de la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos 1987-1988, p. 365. 7 . As it can be inferred from the preble and Articles IV and II of that Convention. 8 . OEA/CP-CAJP, Informe del Presidente del Grupo de Trabajo Encargado de Analizar el Proyecto de Convención Interamericana sobre Desaparición Forzada de Personas, doc. OEA/Ser.G/CP/CAJP-925/93 rev.1, of 25.01.1994, p. 10.

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