- 20“Memory is enduring, it resists the erosion of time, it surges up from the depths and darkness of human suffering; since the routes of the past were traced and duly trod, they are already known, and remain unforgettable. (...)” (para. 41) 73. Indeed, there is no oblivion there can be no oblivion. The sisters, Ernestina and Erlinda Serrano Cruz, who have remained disappeared since June 2, 1982, are still present in the memory of their loved ones, and their drama is now consigned to the annals of international human rights case law. There is no oblivion. in À la recherche du temps perdu, a classic work on the passage of time, Marcel Proust suggests, with subtlety and sophistication, that even though memory is spontaneous, it is a protection against the passage of time, a safeguard against oblivion and indifference; memory, inescapable, even though involuntary, is a means of escape from the fading of events that results from the passage of time. 74. In the end, memory is a means of resisting the transitory nature of human existence. States that seek to forget and impose forgetfulness of the abuses perpetrated in the past, end up causing an added harm to their own people. States that seek to restrict, ratione temporis and ratione materiae, the scope of the jurisdiction (juris dictio) of an international human rights tribunal such as this Court end up by prejudicing their own people and obstructing the progress of international law - human rights law - with regard to jurisdiction. And the international courts that accede to the excesses of State voluntarism end up by ceasing to exercise fully their function and duty to protect. 75. Nevertheless, in this case, the designation of a day dedicated to the memory of the children who disappeared during the Salvadoran armed conflict is an example of the reaction of the law to the effects of the passage of time, because there can be no oblivion. The collective memory will also help to acknowledge the suffering of all the Salvadoran people and, in particular, vindicate the children who lost their innocence and identity prematurely (and some their very life), victims of the millenary ritual of uncontrolled human violence, described with perennial actuality in Homer’s Iliad – sacrificed in armed conflicts typical of the brutal and desperate race towards nothingness of the combatants. Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade Judge Pablo Saavedra Alessandri Secretary