15
and by affection owing to being a member of the same household, which leads to
them being treated with the same relevance and the same consequences as the
other members of the “immediate family”).
IX.
THE POSSESSOR OF THE RIGHT TO COMPENSATION
55.
These clarifications, related, above all, to the procedural legitimization of
those closest to the person who has endured the injury directly and immediately, do
not exclude the possibility – widely explored and recognized in this international
Court’s case law – that the next of kin or those closely connected may, in turn,
become victims of human rights violations, if injuries of this nature are constituted in
relation to them and, thus, the adequate and necessary conditions are met to receive
the compensation corresponding to the injury they have suffered to their own
possessions or rights.
56.
The injury to a freedom or a right may occur directly, through the “blow” that
the act or omission of the agent signified, immediately and autonomously, to the
juridical possession of the subject (for example, death caused by a State agent), or
indirectly, as a result of this conduct, which was not proposed to cause the harm that
“indirectly resulted,” either because this is a notorious and necessary consequence of
the act committed, or because it is part of the chain of cause and effect resulting
from the violation, in the circumstances of a specific case (for example, the intense
suffering of a mother owing to the abduction, torture, disappearance or death of her
child). In this hypothesis, the harmful result stemming from the indirect effect was
not wanted or produced immediately by the violation. In other words, it was not the
goal sought by the State agent, nor the motive or reason for the conduct that
violated the human rights, as is the deprivation of life, in the previous example.
57.
However, once this indirect injury has occurred, health, safety, patrimony,
etc. have already been affected and the corresponding right and principle listed in
the American Convention has been violated. The person who is thus affected
becomes a victim – planned or unexpected, chosen or eventual – of a violation and,
accordingly, appears before the international proceeding and benefits from the
judicial decisions on reparation of damage. At one remove in the group of subjects
who arrive on the scene of international justice is the person who is not explicitly
recognized as being the direct or indirect victim, but who suffers certain adverse
consequences derived from the violation, and who has, indeed, been victimized by
the violation committed. This is the case of those who endure pain, suffering and
anguish as a result of the latter (cf. para 225 of the Judgment, which refers to the
development made by the Inter-American Court’s judgments in the “Street Children”
(Villagrán Morales et al.) and Castillo Páez cases. Reparations), and to whom some
compensation is granted in reparation for non-pecuniary damage, owing to the
suffering that the facts caused them. Hence, in one area of “case law development,”
there is a category of persons who do not appear under the heading of direct victims
and are just beginning to be classified as indirect victims, but who are owed
reparation, because they have been prejudiced by the facts submitted to the Court’s
consideration. In brief, all these subjects are encompassed in the concept of
“Beneficiaries” (Chap. XIII of the Judgment) that the Court generally uses, which
encompasses direct victims, indirect victims and other persons who are located on
the narrow and elusive dividing line between the latter and third parties.
58.
The issue to which I am now referring, arises more pointedly in the case of
those who endure suffering, which may be very intense, owing to the aggression
against another person. Thus, for example, the suffering of a mother owing to what