it can be seen that classes take place under a roof, with no walls, in the open air.254 In addition, the State does not provide any type of program to prevent students from abandoning their studies. * * * 214. In short, this Court emphasizes that the assistance provided by the State under Decree No. 1830 of April 17, 2009, has been insufficient to overcome the conditions of special vulnerability of the Xákmok Kásek Community verified in the decree. 215. The situation of the members of the Community is closely tied to its lack of its lands. Indeed, the absence of possibilities for the members to provide for and support themselves, according to their ancestral traditions, has led them to depend almost exclusively on State actions and be forced to live not only in a way that is different from their cultural patterns, but in squalor. This was noted by Marcelino López, Community leader, who said, “[i]f we have our land, then everything else will improve and, above all, we will be able to live openly as indigenous people; otherwise, it will be very difficult to survive.”255 216. On this point, it should be noted that, as the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has said, “in practice, poverty seriously restricts the ability of a person or a group of persons to exercise the right to take part in, gain access and contribute to, on equal terms, all spheres of cultural life, and more importantly, seriously affects their hopes for the future and their ability to effectively enjoy their own culture.”256 217. Consequently, the Court declares that the State has not provided the basic services to protect the right to a decent life of a specific group of individuals in these conditions of special, real and immediate risk, and this constitutes a violation of Article 4(1) of the Convention, in relation to Article 1(1) thereof, to the detriment of all the members of the Xákmok Kásek Community. 2. The deaths that have occurred in the Community 218. The representatives asked that the State be declared internationally responsible for the death of several members of the Community. In contrast, the Commission indicated that it “lacked evidence to determine if each death described by the representatives [was] indirectly related to the Xákmok Kásek Community’s possibility of acceding to its ancestral territory.” The State objected that its international responsibility could not be declared and contested the representatives’ allegation. 219. In its application, the Commission presented three lists with the names of various members of the Community who had died. In addition, the representatives presented a list with the names of 44 individuals, 38 of whom were also on the list submitted by the Commission,257 while noting that “more people could have died than 254 Cf. Photographs of Elementary School No. 11531 (file of attachments to the State’s final arguments, tome X, folio 4415). 255 Testimony of Marcelino López, supra note 63, folio 585. 256 United Nations, Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. General Comment No. 21, December 21, 2009, E/C.12/GC/21, para. 38. 257 Benigno Corrientes Domínguez, who was said to have died in 1991 at the age of one, does not appear in the list presented by the representatives in the pleadings and motions brief, but does appear in the application and in the 2007 census (appendices to the application, folio 2394). 50

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