survivors). The hiding and lack of respect for the mortal remains of the beloved person affect, thus, his close relatives in the innermost part of their being. 21. The spiritual legacy of the dead, in its turn, constitutes, in my understanding, an expression of the solidarity of those who have already died with those who are still alive, in order to help these latter to confront the injustices of this world, and to live with its queries and misteries (such as those of the passing of time and of the destiny of each one). But the expression of solidarity seems to me to operate also in the other, reciprocal, sense, of the living towards their dead, by virtue of the sufferings that these latter had to undergo before their crossing towards eternity17. 22. The human kind, that is, the unity of the human kind, ought, thus, in my understanding, to be better appreciated in its essentially temporal (and not static) dimension, comprising in the same way also future generations (who begin to attract the attention of the contemporary doctrine of international law) 18. No one would dare to deny the duty that we have, the living beings, to contribute to construct a world in which future generations find themselves free from the violations of human rights which victimized their predecesors (the guarantee of non-repetition of past violations). 23. Human solidarity manifests itself not only in a spacial dimension - that is, in the space shared by all the peoples of the world, - but also in a temporal dimension that is, among the generations who succeed each other in the time19, taking the past, present and future altogether. It is the notion of human solidarity, understood in this wide dimension, and never that of State sovereignty20, which lies on the basis of the whole contemporary thinking on the rights inherent to the human being. 24. Hence the importance of the cultures, - as a link between each human being and the comunity en which he lives (the external world), - in their unanimous attention to the respect due to the dead. In social milieux strongly permeated by a community outlook, - such as the African ones, for example, - there prevails a feeling of harmony between the living and the dead, between the natural environment and the spirits who animate it21. The cultural manifestations ought to 17 . This latter expression of solidarity has been expressed, in the XIXth century, not without pessimism but with compassion, by Arthur Schopenhauer, in recommending that we ought to wish that our dead have "learned their lesson" and that they "have benefited from it"; A. Schopenhauer, Meditaciones sobre el Dolor del Mundo, el Suicidio y la Voluntad de Vivir, Madrid, Tecnos, 1999, p. 88. 18 . Cf., e.g., E. Brown Weiss, In Fairness to Future Generations: International Law, Common Patrimony and Intergenerational Equity, Tokyo/Dobbs Ferry N.Y., United Nations University/Transnational Publs., 1989, pp. 1-351; E. Agius and S. Busuttil et alii (eds.), Future Generations and International Law, London, Earthscan, 1998, pp. 3-197. 19 . Cf. A.-Ch. Kiss, "La notion de patrimoine commun de l'humanité". 175 Recueil des Cours de l'Académie de Droit International de La Haye (1982) pp. 113, 123, 224, 231 and 240; R.-J. Dupuy, La Communauté internationale entre le mythe et l'histoire, Paris, UNESCO/Economica, 1986, pp. 160, 169 and 173, and cf. p. 135 for the "anteriority of conscience over history". 20 . Which is not even the sovereignty of the peoples, and which appears far too limited in space and pathetically restricted in historical time. 21 . J. Matringe, Tradition et modernité dans la Charte Africaine des Droits de l'Homme et des Peuples, Bruxelles, Bruylant, 1996, pp. 69-70.