CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE EDUARDO VIO GROSSI CASE OF GELMAN V.URUGUAY JUDGMENT OF FEBRUARY 24, 2011 (Merits and Reparations) I formulate this concurring opinion to the cited judgment, calling attention to various issues discussed in it. The first is in relation to the close relationship between the situation of María Claudia García Iruretagoyena de Gelman and her daughter, María Macarena Gelman García, which, definitely, form a unit. In this sense, the enforced disappearance of the first, in that context, and the birth of the latter and her subsequent separation, abduction, and hand over to a third party, can be explained jointly and reciprocally. One could not have occurred without the other. Considering, in this way, the facts of the case, would lead one to also deem that which occurred to María Macarena Gelman as an enforced disappearance, and thus the clarification of those facts is also intimately linked to that which occurred to her mother, María Claudia García. In this sense, the situation at issue is one considered in Article II of the Inter-American Convention on the Forced Disappearance of Persons, upon establishing the elements of enforced disappearance of persons, to be the act of "depriving a person or persons of his [or her] or their freedom," "an absence of information on the whereabouts of that person," thereby "impeding his or her remedy to the applicable legal remedies and procedural guarantees."1 It should be evident, therefore, that in this case, what would be involved is the deprivation of liberty of two persons and that the lack of information about the whereabouts of one would prevent the exercise of remedies and procedural guarantees of the other. For this reason, then, both realities essentially constitute one international illegal act, although it obviously affects various rights enshrined in the Convention, and the victims of the violation of these are several persons, principally Maria Macarena Gelman and her grandfather Juan Gelman. And from there, as well, it could also be deemed that while the enforced disappearance of Maria Claudia Garcia does not come to an end, neither does that of Maria Macarena Gelman, although at the moment she is not deprived of her freedom and her identity has been established. Maybe, that which has been analyzed could have been better assessed if the judgment had stemmed from a single narration of the facts of the case presented prior to the basic foundations of law used to determine each of the corresponding violations of the relevant provisions. A second aspect of the ruling that it is worth emphasizing is the partial acknowledgment made by the State. Indeed, that fact, which is assesed, allows for a more specific treatment of the case, since, in recognition thereof, the facts of the case could be divided into two periods. The first, includes those facts that occurred during the military dictatorship, that is, until February 1985, and the second, those 1 Article II of the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons: “For the purposes of this Convention, forced disappearance is considered to be the act of depriving a person or persons of his or their freedom, in whatever way, perpetrated by agents of the state or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of the state, followed by an absence of information or a refusal to acknowledge that deprivation of freedom or to give information on the whereabouts of that person, thereby impeding his or her remedy to the applicable legal remedies and procedural guarantees.”