2 9) According to that declaration, not only acts prior to the declaration but also subsequent acts, which commenced prior to it, are excluded from the Court’s jurisdiction. To determine whether the facts alleged to have resulted in violations of rights and, consequently, State responsibility, fall within these categories, the human rights that are said to have been violated in the applications of the Commission and of the next of kin must be examined. 10) The applications of both the Commission and the next of kin indicate that the rights to life, to humane treatment, to personal liberty, to judicial protection, of the child, of the family, and to a name were violated to the detriment of the alleged victims; and the rights to humane treatment, of the family, to a fair trial and to judicial protection, to the detriment of the next of kin. 11) It can be seen, merely from listing the rights that are said to have been violated, that the alleged violations occurred as a result of the disappearance of the victims or, at least, of facts that commenced on the date of that disappearance (which has been established as June 1982); while, as stated above, the declaration of recognition was made on June 6, 1995; in other words, 13 years later. Not a single fact that resulted in human rights violations commenced after the disappearance. It is true that some facts are subsequent to the declaration, but this is not sufficient since, to fall within the Court’s jurisdiction, they would have to have commenced after this. 12) It has been alleged that the crime of forced disappearance is of a continuing nature while the person disappeared does not appear, and the State has argued that it has not ratified the Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons adopted in Belem do Pará on June 9, 1995. The problem posed is to determine whether the said Convention establishes the continuing nature of the crime of forced disappearance or whether it merely confirms this nature, which had been recognized in other international instruments, so that the fact that the Convention has not been ratified would have no significance. However, in this case, that problem would not have any significance either, because, whether the crime is continuing or not, the facts resulting from it would always have commenced prior to the declaration of recognition and, consequently, are not subject to the Court’s jurisdiction in the instant case. If the contrary were true, this would signify an undue fragmentation of the complex crime of forced disappearance as happens in other cases, when declarations of recognition that have been drafted in a different way are applicable. The characteristics of the crime of forced disappearance, which I agree with, do not detract from the reality that the crime generates facts that can be excluded from the Court’s jurisdiction if a declaration of recognition establishes this, as in the instant case. 13) The Commission has cited paragraph 39 of the judgment on preliminary objections delivered by the Court on July 2, 1996, in Blake vs. Guatemala, which states: “...forced disappearance implies the violation of various human rights recognized in international human rights treaties, including the American Convention, and that the effects of such infringements – even though some may have been completed, as in the instant case – may be prolonged continuously or permanently until such time as the victim's fate or whereabouts are established.

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