8 23. In order to assess whether there is a violation of Article 3, it is essential to observe the current descriptions on forced disappearance: do they include the violation of the right to juridical personality? It is then crucial to establish the situation in which such violation would occur, that is to say, to establish what the juridical personality is, in the first place, and what said right to personality implies, in the second place. The first question has an easy and safe answer: Nor the United States Convention or the InterAmerican Convention in this field contains reference to the right to juridical personality when they describe, impliedly or expressly, the precept of forced disappearance. Until the delivery of the Judgment to which this opinion is attached, the case-law of the Inter-American Court has neither contemplated it. Rather, it had considered that the disappearance did not imply an infringement of said right. 24. Since there is no clear and direct reference to such matter in the conventions and the precedents established by the Inter-American Tribunal, it is vital to examine whether the disappearance includes, based on its own nature, the violation of the right mentioned herein. This is what the Court has done, not without also contemplating some statements about the violation of the juridical personality, made by other considerable sources. 25. Nevertheless, in order to ensure that such violation exists, considering the nature of the forced disappearance, it is necessary to define, as I said before, what is the right to juridical personality. It has been generally understood- as the Inter-American Court has deemed- that the juridical personality implies the capacity of the individual to be entitled to legal rights and obligations. That being the case, the recognition of juridical personality implies the affirmation that an individual has said capacity. The right to recognition entails the possibility of demanding the recognition of the capacity to be entitled to rights and obligations. 26. We are, then, before a right of enormous relevance. The State could not deprive a human being from the capacity to acquire rights, though it could certainly establish legal methods to exercise such rights. But this is a different thing. The capacity to exercise rights, in conjunction with considerations related to age, mental health and other factual information with legal effects, does not affect, in itself, the entitlement to rights. It is also a different thing- an issue of fact, not of law- the creation of obstacles, material disturbance, and arbitrary denial of the State as to the exercise of rights.

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