93 rights ceases to exist.159 States have the obligation to ensure the conditions required for full enjoyment and exercise of that right.160 157. The right to humane treatment is a fundamental right that the American Convention protects by specifically prohibiting, inter alia, torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment or treatment; it also lists the right to humane treatment among those nonderogable rights that may not be suspended during states of emergency.161 158. The right to life and the right to humane treatment require not only that the State respect them (negative obligation) but also that the State adopt all appropriate measures to protect and preserve them (positive obligation), in furtherance of the general obligation that the State undertook in Article 1(1) of the Convention.162 159. As the Court previously indicated (supra paragraphs 151, 152 and 153), in order to protect and ensure the right to life and the right to humane treatment of persons deprived of their liberty and in its role as guarantor of those rights, the State has an ineluctable obligation to provide those persons with the minimum conditions befitting their dignity as human beings, for as long as they are interned in a detention facility. The European Court of Human Rights has likewise held that: under [Article 3 of the Convention], this provision the State must ensure that a person is detained in conditions which are compatible regarding for his human dignity, that the manner and method of the execution of the measure do not subject him to distress or hardship of an intensity exceeding the unavoidable level of suffering inherent in detention and that, given the practical demands of imprisonment, his health and wellbeing are adequately secured by, among other things, providing him with the requisite medical assistance.163 160. In the case of the right to life, when the person the State deprives of his or her liberty is a child, which the majority of the alleged victims in the instant case were, it has the same obligations it has regarding to any person, yet compounded by the added obligation established in Article 19 of the American Convention. On the one hand, it must be all the more diligent and responsible in its role as guarantor and must take special measures based on the principle of the best interests of the child.164 On the other hand, to protect a child’s life, the State must be particularly attentive to that child’s living conditions while deprived of his or her liberty, as the child’s detention or imprisonment does not deny the child his or her right to life or restrict that right (supra para. 159). 159 Supra note 158. 160 Supra note 158. 161 Articles 5 and 27 of the American Convention. 162 Cf. Case of the Gómez Paquiyauri Brothers, supra note 26, para. 129; Case of the 19 Tradesmen, supra note 26, para. 153; and Case of Myrna Mack Chang, supra note 40, para. 153. 163 Eur. Court H.R. Kudla v. Poland, judgement of 26 October 2000, no. 30210/96, paragraphs 93- 94. 164 Cf. Case of the Gómez Paquiyauri Brothers, supra note 26, paragraphs 124, 163-164, and 171; Case of Bulacio, supra note 56, paragraphs 126 and 134; and Case of the “Street Children” (Villagrán Morales et al.), supra note 152, paragraphs 146 and 191. See also Juridical Condition and Human Rights of the Child, supra note 150, paragraphs 56 and 60.