10
27.
Hence the importance of the satisfaction, as a form of non-pecuniary reparation
to the close relatives of the murdered victims. It is the juridical conscience itself that
establishes legal relations throughout time, in which we all live together. But the living
and the dead succeed each other, without necessarily living together; even then, also
in this circumstance, one ought to "practice the neminem laedere and to that end,
previously, the suum cuique tribuere"34. Law is interpreted and applied within the time,
and the reparations due to the victims - direct and indirect - of violations of human
rights make no exception to that.
28.
In my view, one ought to focus the whole theme of the reparations for violations
of human rights as from the integrality of the personality of the victims, discarding any
attempt of mercantilization - and the resulting trivialization - of such reparations. It is
not a question of denying importance to the indemnizations, but rather of warning for
the risks of reducing the wide range of reparations to simple indemnizations. It is not
by mere chance that contemporary legal doctrine has been attempting to devise
distinct forms of reparation - inter alia, restitutio in integrum, satisfaction,
indemnizations, guarantees of non-repetition of the wrongful acts - from the
perspective of the victims, so as to fulfil their needs and claims, and to seek their full
rehabilitation.
29.
When the European Convention of Human Rights completed 40 years of
operation, in 1993, the European Court of Human Rights had granted reparationos of
an invariably pecuniary nature in much more than a hundred cases35. This has
generated expressions of insatisfaction in contemporary European legal doctrine, which
nowadays comes to call for "a reparation more adapted to the situation of the victim"36.
In reality, already in the sixties emerged the first criticisms to a restrictive vision of the
reparations due to the victims. In an article published in 1968, Phédon Vegleris warned
against the inconveniences of the practice - of those days - of the European Court of
limiting the reparations of violations of human rights to simple indemnizations37.
Criticisms of the kind have been renewed and reiterated along the years, at doctrinal
level, in the framework of the European system of protection of human rights.
30.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, on its turn, has taken a much
broader position on the matter, in interpreting and applying Article 63(2) of the
American Convention on Human Rights. Thus, as from its Judgment on reparations in
the case of Aloeboetoe and Others versus Suriname (of 10 September 1993), the Court
has, on some occasions, fixed - correctly, in my view - non-pecuniary reparations,
besides indemnizations. In the Aloeboetoe case referred to, the Court ordered to the
respondent State, as a measure of reparation, inter alia, to reopen a school located in
34
.
Ibid., pp. 25-26, and cf. p. 185.
35
.
Cf. Th. van Boven (special rapporteur), Study concerning the Right to Restitution, Compensation and
Rehabilitation..., op. cit. supra n. (4), p. 34.
36
.
Cf. G. Cohen-Jonathan, "Quelques considérations sur la réparation accordée aux victimes d'une
violation de la Convention Européenne des Droits de l'Homme", in Les droits de l'homme au seuil du troisième
millénaire - Mélanges en hommage à Pierre Lambert, Bruxelles, Bruylant, 2000, pp. 129-140.
37
.
Ph. Vegleris, "Modes de redressement des violations de la Convention Européenne des Droits de
l'Homme - Esquisse d'une classification", in Mélanges offerts à Polys Modinos, Paris, Pédone, 1968, pp. 379380.
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