- 8- (...) The Asociación Pro-Búsqueda was established in August 1994. Up until September 2004, it had resolved 246 requests to trace children and still had 475 cases to resolve. It knows of more than 40 cases of children who disappeared during the armed conflict who are in the homes of Army officers; it was vox populi that children were given away in the military barracks. (...) (...) The March 1993 report of the Truth Commission did not mention the case of the disappeared children, probably because it did not have time to investigate the facts of the disappearance of children. The Truth Commission included the disappearance of children in the global situation of disappearances, and described 30 cases of major massacres and some cases of disappearances as examples. (...)" 27. In his testimony before the Court, the Director of the Asociación Pro-Búsqueda also stated that: "It was a phenomenon that occurred in El Salvador; usually, when these children were brought to the shelters, a judge’s decision [...] declaring that the children had been materially and morally abandoned was sufficient for the judge to order their adoption. [...] The costs of the adoptions depended on where they were carried out; they ranged from five to eight thousand dollars, up to twenty thousand. We have one case in which we were told of a “fattening-up” home, in file 36-A-12-83; it states that the cost of these children, who had been abducted [...] was from 15 to 20 thousand dollars; money which, afterwards, these people shared among themselves and with others [...]. [...] this home, [...] I would call it a child trafficking home [...]. I believe that these adoptions, even if they may have been legal, because they were authorized by a judge, were unlawful, because they were based on the lie [...] that the children had been orphaned or materially and morally abandoned."19 28. Given the circumstances of this case, the Court should have also considered the alleged violations of the rights of the child, bearing in mind the provision of Article 19 of the American Convention which establishes that “every minor child has the right to the measures of protection required by his condition as a minor on the part of his family, society, and the State.” This provision occupies a central position in the consideration of this case which occurred in the context of the tragedy of the children who disappeared during the Salvadoran armed conflict from 1980-1991. In my opinion, the Court should have established that, pursuant to Article 19 of the Convention, the rights of the child had been violated in the instant case to the detriment of the sisters, Ernestina and Erlinda Serrano Cruz. 29. The two sisters, who continue disappeared to this day, were children when the original facts under investigation by the Chalatenango Trial Court occurred and, today, they would be 29 years old and probably 27 years old, respectively. The case occurred in the context of a true human tragedy (during the 1980-1991 Salvadoran armed conflict), about which the Asociación Pro-Búsqueda de Niñas y Niños Desaparecidos has gathered information that speaks for itself,20 and cannot be avoided. The victims were the disappeared children and also their immediate families, according to the expanded 19 ICourtHR, Transcription of the public hearing on preliminary objections and possible merits, reparations and costs in the case of the Serrano Cruz Sisters v. El Salvador, held on September 7 and 8, 2004, at the seat of the Court, San José, Costa Rica, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 2005, p. 15 of this testimony. (for internal circulation) [in Spanish only] 20 Cf., e.g., Asociación Pro-Búsqueda de Niñas y Niños Desaparecidos, La Problemática de Niñas y Niños Desaparecidos como Consecuencia del Conflicto Armado Interno en El Salvador, El Salvador, San Salvador, 1999, pp. 29-35; Asociación Pro-Búsqueda de Niñas y Niños Desaparecidos/Save the Children, Un Estudio sobre la Problemática de la Niñez Desaparecida por el Conflicto Armado en El Salvador, El Salvador, San Salvador, 2002, pp. 24-26.