PARTIALLY DISSENTING OPINION OF
JUDGE ALBERTO PÉREZ PÉREZ
CASE OF THE KALIÑA AND LOKONO PEOPLES V. SURINAME
JUDGMENT OF NOVEMBER 25, 2015
(Merits, Reparations and Costs)
1.
I have dissented from operative paragraphs 1 to 3 because they unduly cite certain
articles of the American Convention on Human Rights that have presumably been violated
as grounds for the judgment: respectively, Articles 3, 23 and 13. The Court’s application of
these articles in this case conflicts with the evident meaning of these provisions, and the
reasoning that is given is totally insufficient and even, in one case, almost inexistent.
2.
Furthermore, as will be seen, the rights that it is intended to protect by citing
Articles 3, 13 and 23 are correctly founded on other provisions of the Convention, already
contained in the text of the judgment.
I.
3.
Article 3 (Right to Recognition of Juridical Personality)
was not violated
Article 3 establishes:
Article 3. Right to recognition of juridical personality
Every person has the right to recognition as a person before the law.
Meanwhile, Article 1(2) stipulates:
2. For the purposes of this Convention, "person" means every human being.
4.
Significantly, neither of these provisions has been transcribed in the text of the
judgment. Perhaps the reason for this unjustified omission is the fact that it is sufficient to
read Article 3 and Article 1(2) to note that the right to recognition of juridical personality is
one of the “rights and guarantees that are inherent in the human being” (Article 29(c)),
that cannot be suspended in states of emergency (Article 27(2)).
5.
Consequently, Article 3 cannot serve as grounds for granting or recognizing legal
status [personería jurídica] to groups or collective entities, whether or not they are
indigenous or tribal peoples or communities.
6.
Recognition of juridical personality to the individual human beings who compose that
people or community, as the Court did in the case of the Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous
Community, is a different matter. In that case, it declared that Article 3 had been violated
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