12
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in its Report of 15.02.1995 on the
case.
27
36.
As the Court points out both in the present Judgment (paragraph 108) as
well as in the Judgment of 17.09.1997 in the Loayza Tamayo versus Peru case
(Merits, paragraph 81), given that the Commission is an organ, together with the
Court, with competence "with respect to matters relating to the fulfillment of the
commitments made by the States Parties" (Article 33 of the American
Convention), these latter undertake to abide by what is approved in its Reports.
This being so, Guatemala, as a State Party to the Convention, will certainly not
only comply with the provisions of the present Judgment of the Court, but also
bear in mind bona fide the considerations of the other supervisory organ of the
American Convention, and the other conventional obligations pertaining to the
rights protected by the American Convention, which ensue from its ratification of
this latter.
37.
Finally, as to the violations of the judicial guarantees and the right to
mental and moral integrity (Articles 8(1) and 5, respectively, in relation to Article
1(1), of the American Convention) to the detriment of the next of kin of Nicholas
Chapman Blake, as established in the present Judgment of the Court, I allow
myself to add one brief and last thought. Herein lies, in my understanding, the
contribution of the Judgment that the Inter-American Court has just rendered to
the development of the jurisprudential treatment of the crime of forced
disappearance of person, to the extent that it gives precision to the position of
the next of kin of the disappeared person as subjects (titulaires) of the rights
protected by the American Convention.
38.
In a continuing situation proper to the forced disappearance of person,
the victims are the disappeared person (main victim) as well as his next of kin;
the indefinition generated by the forced disappearance withdraws all from the
28
protection of the law . The condition of victims cannot be denied also to the next
of kin of the disappeared person, who have their day-to-day life transformed into
a true calvary, in which the memories of the person dear to them are
intermingled with the permanent torment of his forced disappearance. In my
understanding, the complex form of violation of multiple human rights which the
crime of forced disappearance of person represents has as a consequence the
enlargement of the notion of victim of violation of the protected rights.
26.
CIDH, Informe 5/95 - Caso 11.219 (Guatemala), doc. OEA/Ser.L/V/II.88-Doc.17, of
15.02.1995, pp. 15-18.
27.
Cf., in this sense, Article 1(2) of the United Nations Declaration on the Protection of All
Persons against Forced Disappearances.
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