2 to “care and prevent the breach of the right to life and humane treatment, as well as […] its duty to regulate and monitor health care services, which are special duties derived from its obligation to guarantee the rights enshrined in Articles 4 and 5 of the American Convention.”4 While, in the case of Yakye Axa, which dealt with an indigenous community composed by an identifiable group of families, who had been displaced from their territory and were temporarily living in poverty-stricken conditions in an area alongside the highway, the Court determined that the State had “the duty to take positive, concrete measures geared toward fulfillment of the right to a decent life.”5 5. Both the European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter “the European Court”) and the Inter-American Court have developed precise and rigorous criteria to define the “obligation to prevent” within the framework of more extensive and general situations. In this regard, since 1998, the European Court has adopted decisions in which it has analyzed the complexity of the issue of the obligation to prevent and listed some specific criteria to define it. Thus, in Osman v. the United Kingdom, the European Court took a cautious approach to defining the obligation to prevent, mentioning some specific criteria that have been repeated in its more recent decisions:6 For the Court, and bearing in mind the difficulties involved in policing modern societies, the unpredictability of human conduct and the operational choices which must be made in terms of priorities and resources, such an obligation must be interpreted in a way which does not impose an impossible or disproportionate burden on the authorities. […] In the opinion of the Court where there is an allegation that the authorities have violated their positive obligation to protect the right to life […] it must be established to its satisfaction that the authorities knew or ought to have known at the time of the existence of a real and immediate risk to the life of an identified individual or individuals from the criminal acts of a third party and that they failed to take measures within the scope of their powers which, judged reasonably, might have been expected to avoid that risk.7 6. Thus, the European Court stresses the difficulty of guaranteeing public order, the unpredictability of human conduct and the vastness of the operational choices which must be made to determine priorities and allocate resources, and draws the conclusion that the obligation to prevent cannot be interpreted in a way that imposes an impossible or disproportionate burden on the State. From this perspective, it emphasizes the obligation to take “appropriate steps to safeguard the lives of those within its jurisdiction,”8 which supposes putting in place effective criminal-law provisions to deter the commission of offenses against the person, backed up by lawenforcement machinery for prevention, suppression and sanctioning.9 In “certain well defined circumstances”10 this obligation may also impose a positive obligation on the authorities to take preventive operational measures to protect an individual whose life is at risk of experiencing the criminal acts of another individual. 4 Cf. Case of Ximenes Lopes v. Brazil, supra note 1, para. 146. 5 Cf. Case of Yakye Axa Indigenous Community v. Paraguay, supra note 2, para. 162 6 For example, European Court of Human Rights, Kilic v. Turkey (Application no. 22492/93) Judgment Strasbourg, 28 March 2000, para. 63, and Opuz v. Turkey (Application no. 33401/02), Judgment Strasbourg, 9 June 2009. para. 129. 7 Cf. Osman v. The United Kingdom (87/1997/871/1083). Judgment Strasbourg, 28 October 1998, para. 116. 8 Cf. Osman v. The United Kingdom, supra note 7, para. 115 9 Cf. Osman v. The United Kingdom, supra note 7, para. 115 10 Cf. Osman v. The United Kingdom, supra note 7, para. 115