CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE A. A. CANÇADO TRINDADE
1.
I vote in favor of this Judgment, which has just been adopted by the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights in the case of Palamara-Iribarne v. Chile, with which
I mostly agree. I would like to add some brief remarks and opinions in this Concurring
Opinion, as grounds for my personal position on the matter addressed by the Court in
this Judgment, particularly regarding a central aspect in which I have centered my
attention for years while in the Court seat.
2.
The Court has correctly determined the alignment of the domestic law of the
respondent Government with the rules and regulations of the American Convention on
Human Rights as a means of reparation (specifically, as satisfaction and guarantee of
non-repetition). In a sharp paragraph of this Judgment, the Court stated that
"As to the need to bring its domestic laws in line with the
international standards on military criminal jurisdiction, it is the Court's
view that, should the State consider that having military criminal courts
is in fact necessary, [their jurisdiction should be restricted] to cases
concerning crimes of a strictly military nature committed by military
personnel in active service only. Therefore, through its own domestic
laws, the State is required to set limits to the subject-matter and
personal jurisdiction of military courts, so that under no circumstance
may a civilian be subjected to the jurisdiction of military criminal courts
(...)" (para. 256).
3.
I have been stating for years within this Court, my understanding in the sense
of the broad scope of the general duties of protection set forth in Articles 1(1) and 2
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of the American Convention. In my opinion, the American Convention is not infringed
just because one of the rights it protects has been violated; it is also violated
whenever one of the general duties therein set forth is not complied with (Articles
1(1) and 2)). Thus, the general duty of Article 1(1) of the Convention – to respect and
make others respect, without any discrimination, the rights the Convention protects –
is much more than a mere “accessory” to the provisions regarding conventionally
consecrated rights, taken one by one, individually; it is a general duty imposed to the
States Parties and which encompasses the aggregate of rights protected by the
Convention.
4.
Its continued violation may entail additional violations, added to the original
ones. Article 1(1) consequently has a broad scope. It refers to a permanent duty of
the States, the non-fulfillment of which may cause new victims, generating per se
additional violations, without it being necessary to relate them to the rights originally
injured.
5.
Fortunately, the Court has taken my interpretation of the broad scope of
Articles 1(1) and 2 of the Convention from the case of Suárez-Rosero v. Ecuador
(Judgment of November 12, 1997), with immediate positive results, and in other
subsequent Judgments (those of the cases of Castillo-Petruzzi et al v. Perú, of May 30,
1999; Baena-Ricardo et al v. Panamá, of February 2, 2001; of Hilaire, Constantine
and Benjamin et al. v. Trinidad and Tobago, of June 21, 2002; case of the “Five
Pensioners” v. Peru, of February 28, 2003; as I have just remembered in my recent
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In my interpretation of Article 1(1) – as well as of Article 2 – of the Convention, which maximizes human
rights protection under the Convention, I have been insisting, within the seat of this Court, from my
Dissenting Opinion in the case of Caballero-Delgado and Santana v. Colombia (reparations, Judgment of
January 29, 1997).