5
States, establishes, among other measures, those to ensure the provision of
necessary medical assistance and health care to all children with emphasis on the
development of primary health care; to combat disease and malnutrition, including
within the framework of primary health care, through, inter alia, the application of
readily available technology and through the provision of adequate nutritious foods
and clean drinking-water, taking into consideration the dangers and risks of
environmental pollution.
*
*
15.
*
I wish to emphasize that my dissent with regard to operative paragraph 4 of
the Judgment is due only to my specific consideration of the evidence in this case.
16.
As grounds for my opinion that the Court should have considered the
circumstances that caused the death of some of the persons listed in the application
to have been sufficiently proven, I will quote the reasoning of Judge De Roux Rengifo,
in his partially dissenting opinion in the judgment on the “Durand and Ugarte” case
(August 16, 2000):
“...In its recent jurisprudence on evidence appraisal (including the one having
an effect on the judgment related to this opinion), this Court has stated the
following three criteria: 1) an international court of human rights has a
significant scope of flexibility when assessing evidence, according to logic
rules and based on experience; 2) international courts can largely base their
decisions on circumstantial or indirect evidence, on presumptions as long as
these means can give rise to solid conclusions on the facts; 3) in processes of
violations of human rights the State defense cannot be grounded on the
failure of the plaintiff to gather evidence because, very frequently, these
cannot be obtained without the cooperation of the State itself, which precisely
has the necessary resources to clarify the facts that have taken place in its
territory.”
17.
Just as Judge De Roux Rengifo stated at the time in his partly dissenting
opinion, mutatis mutandi, I myself deem that if the Court had applied its own criteria
on assessment of the evidence, it would have issued a different ruling in operative
paragraph 4 of the Judgment in the case of the “Yakye Axa indigenous community vs.
Paraguay”.
Select target paragraph3
Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents