52 (a) The right to juridical personality is a fundamental requirement for the enjoyment of all the basic freedoms, because this right grants the individual recognition before the law; (b) The Dominican Republic’s domestic legislation, in the Code for the Protection of Children and Adolescents (Act No. 14–94), recognizes the relationship between legal identity and the protection of the fundamental rights of the child, and guarantees the child’s fundamental right to dignity, which includes the right to identity and explicitly prohibits any discrimination in granting or withdrawing the fundamental rights of the child based on race or nationality, and (c) The refusal by Dominican officials to register the children Dilcia and Violeta in the Civil Status Registry Office resulted in their exclusion from the State’s juridical and institutional system since, for over four years, neither Dilcia nor Violeta had a birth certificate (the legal document recognized by the Dominican Republic as proof of identity) and, consequently, they were not recognized before the law, which violates Article 3 of the American Convention. 114. The Commission did not allege that Article 18 of the Convention had been violated. Arguments of the representatives 115. With regard to Article 19 of the American Convention, the representatives indicated that: (a) Given the legal incapacity and vulnerability of the children Dilcia and Violeta, the State had a special obligation, required by their status as minors under Article 19 of the Convention, to adopt measures of protection to ensure their rights to nationality, juridical personality, education, the family and judicial protection. The arbitrary and inconsistent impediments to which the State subjected the children in their efforts to obtain the documentation constitute a direct violation of the rights embodied in Article 19 of the American Convention, in relation to Article 1(1) thereof, and (b) Article 19 of the Convention requires special protection measures to be taken to guarantee the right of children to education, owing to their specific situation of vulnerability and because this right cannot be protected without special assistance from the family, society and the State. The right to education is one of the rights protected by Article 26 of the American Convention. 116. In relation to Article 20 of the Convention, the representatives argued that: (a) The Dominican Republic violated the right to nationality of the children Dilcia and Violeta by denying them the possibility of registering their birth on national territory under the constitutional principle of ius soli, based on their race and parentage; (b) The State’s interpretation of the “in transit” exception, and its application in the instant case, adds a restriction to obtaining nationality that