SEPARATE OPINION OF JUDGE A.A. CANÇADO TRINDADE 1. I have concurred with my vote in the instant Judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the case of the Gómez Paquiyauri Brothers versus Peru. The issues raised by the cas d'espèce and addressed by the Court in the Judgment it reached have led me to reflect on certain matters that I feel I must state in this Separate Opinion, as the grounds for my position on them. I will refer, specifically, to the following points: a) the tragic vulnerability of the human condition, as shown by the facts in the instant case; b) establishment of the emergence of the international responsibility of the State; c) interaction between international law and domestic law in the current sphere of protection, transcending the “principle of subsidiarity,” as it has been called; d) emancipation of the individual vis-à-vis his or her own State; e) implementation of the international responsibility of the State through the initiative of the individual as the subject of international law; and f) compulsory Law (jus cogens) and the establishment of the aggravated international responsibility of the State. I. The Tragic Vulnerability of the Human Condition. 2. The facts in the instant case bring before this Court, once again, the recurring issue of the vulnerability and insecurity inherent to the human condition. The inevitable nature of human suffering seems proven over the centuries, and the fragility of the human condition has always been a matter of reflection, including our own days.1 Since the times of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides to our own, the perennial and current nature of tragedy has expressed itself in the lives of millions and millions of human beings, generation after generation. It is difficult to find someone who has not suffered it somehow or become aware of it. Tragedy, today as in the 5th century B.C., is present every day in the daily life of millions of human beings. The facts of the instant case of the Gómez Paquiyauri brothers attest to this as they -like so many others whom we have not even heard about over the ageswere the victims of human brutality. 3. In the instant case of the Gómez Paquiyauri Brothers, the testimony of the next of kin of the two victims before this Court, and throughout the instant Judgment, concur in that when their bodies were found at the morgue, with a sign that read “unidentified”, they were both wet, dirty, with their clothes full of dirt and blood, with an expression of “horrible pain,” and their faces mangled; the eye sockets of both brothers were empty, and there was encephalic mass on their hair; one of them (Rafael) was missing a thumb, which had been shot off, and the palms had holes in them, as if they had been burned; the other deceased brother’s mouth (Emilio’s) was half-open, his teeth full of dirt. One of the surviving brothers (Miguel Ángel Gómez Paquiyauri) stated before the Inter-American Court that “he ha[d] no words to describe” what he saw. The father of the two youths (Ricardo Samuel Gómez Paquiyauri) added that “his children, 14 and 17 years old, were cruelly tortured and murdered."2 4. In her testimony before the Inter-American Court, at the public hearing on May 5, 2004, the Gómez Paquiyauri brothers’ mother (Marcelina Paquiyauri Illanes 1 For example, in the works of A. Malraux and H. Arendt, with similar titles, among others. 2 See para. 49 (b),(c),(d), and (e) of the instant Judgment. . .