8
27.
I could not conclude this Concurring Opinion without highlighting the
importance of the international jurisdiction on human rights: once more, those
forgotten by the world presented their case before it. The humiliations and suffering
they underwent have been judicially acknowledged, along with their juridical
consequences for the responsible parties. In the present Judgment, the Court has
warned that the dangerous stigmatization that poor children and youngsters would
be conditioned to delinquency, creates a “favorable climate” so that said minors in
risky situations be placed before a constant threat to their life, their right to humane
treatment and personal liberties (para. 112).
28.
In its Report of 06.14.2002 regarding Honduras, the Special Rapporteur of
the United Nations on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Killings (Sra. A.
Jahangir), warning against “the criminalization of poverty” and the wrong tendency
of attributing the violent deaths of minors to “confrontations between gangs,” 11
stated that
"the cases of extrajudicial killings of children and the general phenomenon of young
violence and poverty in Honduras are linked both in a solid and categorical manner. (...)
Young delinquency may never be used to justify security forces killing children in order
to maintain public order." 12
29.
And it made it worse that in Honduras “children make up the majority of the
population,” living in conditions of vulnerability, affected by “the poverty and
insecurity” derived from “social, political, and economic injustice.” 13 According to the
Special Rapporteur of the United Nations,
"in Honduras some children have been killed by members of the police force. In the
majority of the cases the children were unarmed and they had not provoked the police
officer to employ force, and even less so lethal means. (...) Besides institutionalized
impunity, there is a campaign to condition the public opinion to support the ‘cleaning’ of
undesirable children from the streets of Honduras." 14
30.
On its part, and in the same line of reasoning, the [then] National Human
Rights Commissioner (Mr. Leo Valladares Lanza), in his Special Report on the Violent
Deaths of Boys, Girls, and Teenagers in Honduras, of 01.21.2002, also warned
against the social alienation of children and youngsters in Honduras, the social
indifference, and the "intolerable impunity" when facing the “massive death of
teenagers and youngsters,” and their fateful consequences, such as the increase of
violence and public insecurity. In his words,
"In the last four years the rights to life and to humane treatment have been
systematically breached, toward a clearly identified sector. Teenagers and youngsters
have been murdered in different cities of the country under arbitrary presumptions and
.
UN, document E/CN.4/2003/3/Add.2, of 06.14.2002, page 12, paras. 31-32.
.
Ibid., page 11, para. 29.
11
12
.
Ibid., pages 27 and 14, paras. 87 and 39. According to the Special Rapporteur of the United
Nations, “many of the victims of the extrajudicial killings belong to single-parent families that are normally
headed by the mother. The loss of women’s autonomy is closely linked to the alienation of the child";
ibid., page 27, para. 88.
13
.
14
Ibid., page 25, para. 73.