10 organization, and inherent to human beings, were confirmed as opposable to public power itself. 33. Human being’s international legal personality was defined as a limit to the free judgment of the State’s power. Human rights definitely opened the subjective law’s conception of the ties of legal positivism. Yes, on one hand, the juridical category of human beings’ international legal personality contributed to the instrumentalization of the vindication of the rights of human beings, which arise from International Law, - on the other hand the corpus juris of universal human rights provided the individual’s legal personality with a much more ample dimension, no longer conditioned by the right that results from the State’s public power.35 34. It is important to mention here the contribution, regarding the intangibility of the international legal personality of human beings, of the 17th Advisory Opinion of the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights, on the Juridical Condition and Human Rights of the Child (of 08.28.2002): the Court made it clear that the Law necessarily acknowledges the legal personality of all human being (whether it is a child or teenager), regardless of their existential condition or of the scope of their legal capacity to exercise their rights for themselves (capacity to exercise). In effect, the acknowledgment and consolidation of the human being’s position as a full subject of International Human Rights Law constitutes, in our days, - as I have been stating for several years, - an unequivocal and eloquent statement of the advances in the ongoing process of humanization of International Law itself (jus gentium).36 5. The Conceptualization of Victim and the Contribution of International Human Rights Law. 35. The victim is the human being victimized in the rights inherent qua person. The conceptualization of victim, the same as that of person (supra), has its historical roots throughout the centuries. Etymologically, the term victim (from the Latin victima) was originally used with regard to the person that was sacrificed (in rituals) or destined to be sacrificed. As of the XVII century, it acquired the sense of the person injured, tortured, or murdered by another. In the XVIII century, the term went on to refer to the person injured or oppressed by another, or by any power or situation. The term “victimize” was used in the XIX century (as of 1830).37 In the XX century, the new discipline of victimology focused its attention on the victim,38 - in opposition to criminology, which was focused on the criminal. . A.A. Cançado Trindade, "A Consolidação da Personalidade e da Capacidade Jurídicas do Indivíduo...", op. cit. supra n. (33), pp. 280-281; A.A. Cançado Trindade, "La Persona Humana como Sujeto del Derecho Internacional: Avances de Su Capacidad Jurídica Internacional en la Primera Década del Siglo XXI", in Jornadas de Derecho Internacional (Buenos Aires, November 2006), Washington D.C., OAS/ General Secretariat, 2007, pages 246-249. 35 . Cf., among my various articles in this sense, e.g., A.A. Can��ado Trindade, A Humanização do Direito Internacional, Belo Horizonte/Brasil, Edit. Del Rey, 2006, pages 3-409. 36 37 . Cf. The Oxford English Dictionary, 2a. ed., tomo XIX, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989, p. 607; Asociación H. Capitant, Vocabulario Jurídico (dir. G. Cornu), Bogotá, Temis, 1995, p. 904; G. Gómez de Silva, Breve Diccionario Etimológico de la Lengua Española, México, El Colegio de México/FCE, 1996 [reimpr.], page 719. . Cf. E. Neuman, Victimología - El Rol de la Víctima en los Delitos Convencionales y No Convencionales, Buenos Aires, Edit. Universidad, 1994, pages 27-28. 38

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