50).
26.
As I allowed myself to previously state in my Concurring Opinion in the historic
Advisory Opinion n. 16 of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the Right to
Information on Consular Assistance in the Famework of the Guarantees of the Due
Process of Law (of 01.10.1999), we nowadays witness
"the process of humanization of international law, which today
encompasses also this aspect of consular relations. In the confluence of these
latter with human rights, the subjective individual right to information on
consular assistance, of which are titulaires all human beings who are in the
need to exercise it, has crystallized: such individual right, inserted into the
conceptual universe of human rights, is nowadays supported by conventional
international law as well as by customary international law" (par. 35).
27.
On other occasions I referred to the subjective right within certain contexts.28
The conceptualization of subjective right historically came before the appearance and
extraordinary expansion of International Human Rights Law throughout the second
half of the XX century and in this first decade of the XXI century. With the appearance
and consolidation of the latter, a decisive step was taken towards the definitive
emancipation of human beings before their own State.
28.
This also led to the clarification of the international juridical personality of
human beings, whose conceptualization, throughout the last decades, - directly
related to the access of human beings to international justice, - I covered in my
Concurring Opinion in the case of Five Pensioners v. Peru (Reparations, Judgment of
02.28.2003), as well as in my Concurring Opinions in the cases of Yatama v.
Nicaragua, and Goiburú et al. v. Paraguay (Judgments of 06.23.2005 and 09.22.2006,
respectively), as well as in the case of the Members of the Team of Community Teams
and Psychosocial Action - ECAP (case of the Massacre of Plan de Sánchez v.
Guatemala, Order on Provisional Protection Measures, of 11.29.2006).29
4.
From Subjective Law to the New Dimension of International
Juridical Entitlement of Human Beings.
29.
The international juridical entitlement of human beings, as foreseen by the socalled “founders” of International Law, is currently a reality. Within the realm of
International Human Rights Law, today the European and Inter-American protection
systems – with international tribunals in operation – acknowledge, next to the
individual’s juridical personality, their international procedural capacity (locus standi in
judicio). This is a logical development, since it does not seem reasonable to conceive
rights within the international realm without the corresponding procedural capacity to
defend them; individuals are in fact the true petitioners in the international legal
human rights processes. Regarding the right of international individual petitions the
juridical mechanism of emancipation of the human being vis-à-vis the State itself for
the protection of their rights within the realm of International Human Rights Law are
.
For example, in my Concurring Opinion in Advisory Opinion n. 18 (of 09.17.2003) of this
Court, on the Juridical Condition and Rights of the Undocumented Migrants, I referred to the
construction of the subjective individual right to asylum (paras. 31-43); reproduced in: A.A.
Cançado Trindade, Derecho Internacional de los Derechos Humanos - Esencia y Trascendencia
(Votos en la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, 1991-2006), México, Edit.
Porrúa/Universidad Iberoamericana, 2007, pages 63-68. I also referred to legal subjectivity in
my Concurring Opinion (paras. 17-28) in the case of the Castro Castro Criminal Center,
regarding Peru (Judgment of 11.25.2006); also reproduced in ibid., pages 820-845.
28
29
.
Reproduced in ibid., pages 355-362, 568-570, 779-804, and 1020-1025, respectively.