41 Convention165 so that an important source of reference regarding Article 29(c) of the American Convention and the corpus juris of international human rights law,166 is the Convention on the Rights of the Child,167 an international instrument that expressly recognizes the right to identity. Its Article 8(1) indicates that “States Parties undertake to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as acknowledged by law without unlawful interference.” From the regulation of the norm contained in the Convention on Rights of the Child, it can be deduced that identity is a right that encompasses several elements, including nationality, name and family relationships, included in the said article in a descriptive but not restrictive manner. In the same way, the Inter-American Juridical Committee has underlined that the “right to identity is consubstantial to human attributes and dignity,” and an autonomous right, possessing “a central nucleus of clearly identifiable elements that include the right to a name, the right to nationality, and the right to family relationships.” In fact, “it is a fundamental human right opposable erga omnes as an expression of a collective interest of the international community as a whole, which admits neither annulment nor suspension in the cases established in the American Convention.”168 Consequently, in the circumstances of this case, and taking into consideration the context of the terms of the American Convention, interpreted in light of Article 31 of the Vienna Convention, the Court finds that the series of violations of the rights established in the American Convention that were analyzed constitute a violation of the right to identity, which is inherent in the human being, and is stipulated expressly in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. 113. In this regard, this Court has previously established that “the right to identity can be conceptualized, in general, as a collection of attributes and characteristics that allow for the individualization of a person in society. In that sense, in includes several other rights according to the subject of the rights in question and the circumstances of the case.”169 Thus, personal identity is intimately linked to the person in his or her specific individuality and private life, both of which are based on an historical and biological experience, as well as the way in which each individual relates with others through the development of social and family ties.170 Moreover, it is important to stress that, although identity has special 165 Cf. Case of Apitz Barbera et al. (“First Administrative Law Court”) v. Venezuela. Preliminary objection, merits, reparations and costs. Judgment of August 5, 2008. Series C No. 182, paras. 217 and 218. 166 Cf. The Right to Information on Consular Assistance in the Framework of the Guarantees of Due Process of Law. Advisory Opinion OC-16/99 of October 1, 1999. Series A No. 16, para. 115; Case of the Ituango Massacres v. Colombia. Preliminary objection, merits, reparations and costs. Judgment of July 1, 2006. Series C No. 148, footnote 177, and Case of the Yakye Axa Indigenous Community v. Paraguay. Merits reparations and costs. Judgment of June 17, 2005. Series C No. 125, para. 128. 167 El Salvador has been a party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child since July 10, 1990, which entered into force on September 2, 1990, in accordance with its Article 49(1). 168 Cf. Inter-American Juridical Committee, Opinion “on the scope of the right to identity” Seventy-first regular session, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Document CJI/doc. 276/07 rev. 1, of August 10, 2007, paras. 11(2) and 18(3)(3), approved at the same session by resolution CJI/RES.137 (LXXI-O/07), of August 10, 2010, second operative paragraph. 169 170 Case of Gelman, supra note 16, para. 122. For example, expert witness Yáñez de la Cruz indicated that “according to psychology, identity responds to a basic question, which is “who am I?”; the need to know one’s identity […] is a basic need of each human being; it is the center of gravity around which the person develops and becomes part of the world; your place or your persona in the world is based on identity; but identity also has a dialectic perspective between the individual persona and the social persona. The human being evolves in society; the identity is developed first within the primary framework of the family, the mother, the father, but it evolves in the social framework in which it is inserted: namely the community, which represents place, other families, and therefore there is no persona that is not a social persona; it is not separate, we are social beings.” Expert opinion provided by María Sol Yáñez de la Cruz before the Inter-American Court during the public hearing held on May 17, 2011. For her part, expert witness Villalta stated: “[t]he right to a name and a nationality is universal, but, at the same time, the identity includes the