2 and justify the measures- the exact identity of the beneficiaries. In these cases, a number of persons face the same, grave danger. 5. If we were to wait until it is possible to individually identify those facing this danger of grave and irreparable detriment to legally protected interests –reflected in the respective rights-, there would be a risk of the injury occurring without the Court having intervened to avoid it, even though it was aware that it was not only possible but probable and imminent that it would occur. Thus, a technicality that could be overcome would keep the Court from acting promptly to carry out its true function: to use its jurisdictional authority to protect the rights that are at risk. It would be difficult to argue that abstaining from doing so is consistent with the protective mission entrusted to the Inter-American Court. 6. Hence the noteworthy shift in the jurisprudence of the Court beginning with the Order on provisional measures issued in the Matter of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó v. Colombia, on November 24, 2000. For the first time, this Order extended the benefit of said measures to the members of a group of persons facing the same risk who were not listed individually but were identifiable in light of certain objective data that make it possible to establish their identity. With this, the jurisprudence of the Court took a great step forward in terms of true protection of human rights, which is not satisfied by reparation of the injury that already occurred, but rather requires, foremost, to act in a timely, sufficient, and diligent manner to avoid said injury. 7. In this case, mi colleague Judge Alirio Abreu-Burelli and I stated, in a Separate Concurring Opinion, the background, intent, and characteristics of the new subjective scope of the provisional measures, which certainly does not contravene the provisions of the Convention, but rather interprets its aims and adjusts judicial decisions to them. In this opinion we referred to the existing similarity, mutatis mutandi, between the diffuse interests subject to juridical protection and the breachable rights of individuals who are part of a more or less numerous group of persons, as well as the connection that might exist, also in relative terms, between a popular interest action to protect rights of members of a collectivity and urgent steps regarding those rights through a petition for provisional measures. 8. The criterion adopted in the Matter of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó has been applied by the Court in other cases. This has asserted its relevance and has enabled this protective institution to evolve in a manner that is appropriate to the intent that inspires it. The San José de Apartadó case dealt with a peace community, whose members –several hundred individuals- were linked by a certain geographical settlement, which could vary, and certain joint decisions, which generated the individual and collective risk. In subsequent cases, other data for analysis of the group whose members benefit from provisional measures have appeared: it may be, as has in fact occurred, an indigenous community, a population of adult inmates or of juvenile offenders, a set of workers carrying out their activities in a specific center, and so forth. All these situations constitute spheres for application of the provisional measures, for exactly the same motives and reasons that were the grounds for the decision of the Inter-American Court in the Matter of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. 9. In the three cases that the Orders to which I attached this Opinion refer, as well as in that of the Matter of “Globovisión” Television Station, one can see the conditions that enable ordering provisional measures under the criterion adopted in

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