CONCURRING OPION OF JUDGE DIEGO GARCIA-SAYAN IN RELATION TO THE JUDGMENT OF THE INTER-AMERICAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE CASE OF GONZÁLEZ ET AL. (“COTTON FIELD”) V. MEXICO, OF NOVEMBER 16, 2009 1. Violence against women is a tragedy with different dimensions and symptoms. Without doubt, it is one of most extended and persistent expressions of discrimination throughout the world, and it is reflected in conduct ranging from subtle and veiled manifestations to inhuman and abusive situations. The violence against women in Ciudad Juárez, of which Claudia Ivette González, Esmeralda Herrera Monreal and Laura Berenice Ramos Monárrez were victims, falls into the latter category, which is the type of violence referred to in this Judgment in the case of González et al. (“Cotton Field”) v. Mexico (hereinafter “the Judgment”). As the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (hereinafter “the Inter-American Court,” “the Court,” or “the Tribunal”) states in the Judgment, the facts described have been influenced “by a culture of gender-based discrimination” (para. 164). This culture “has had an impact on both the motives and the method of the crimes, as well as on the response of the authorities” (para. 164). According to the Judgment, one example of this was “the ineffective responses and the indifferent attitudes that have been documented in relation to the investigation of these crimes” (para. 164) regarding which the Court has established the State’s international responsibility. 2. In the case of the violent acts against women in Ciudad Juárez, the Court has pondered in the Judgment whether the acts perpetrated against the victims that culminated in the deaths of Mss. González, Herrera Monreal and Ramos Monárrez, could be attributed to the State (para. 231). The Court established that it lacked elements to conclude that the perpetrators were State agents (para. 242) and focused its reasoning on the State’s possible responsibility for failing to comply with its obligation to guarantee. 3. The issue of the obligation to prevent has been examined by international justice, in general, and by this Court, in particular, with a clear focus, notwithstanding the undoubted complexity of the problem. The Court’s jurisprudence has established precise fundamental criteria on the obligation to prevent. These criteria are more specific, evidently, in the case of individuals who are in the custody of the State, as in the case of a center where minors were interned1 or situations in which the State occupies a special position of guarantor, as in the case of an indigenous community that has been displaced because it has been ousted from its land.2 4. Indeed, in more specific situations such as those in Ximenes Lopes v. Brazil or Yakye Axa v. Paraguay, the Court’s criteria have been more precise, because these cases related to human groups occupying spaces under the custody of the State in view of the specific characteristics of the problems in each case. In the case of Ximenes Lopes, the Court established that, since this case related to individuals with mental disabilities who were in the custody or care of the State,3 the State had incurred international responsibility because it had failed to comply with its obligation 1 Cf. Case of Ximenes Lopes v. Brazil. Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of July 4, 2006. Series C No. 149. 2 Cf. Case of Yakye Axa Indigenous Community v. Paraguay. Merits, Reparations and Costs. Judgment of June 17, 2005. Series C No. 125 3 Cf. Case of Ximenes Lopes v. Brazil, supra note 1, para. 138.