carrying out key procedures to advance the investigations, without the State having justified this sufficiently. Therefore, this Court finds that, in this case, none of the investigations constituted an effective means to guarantee the rights to life, personal integrity, personal liberty, private life, and private property of the victims. As this Court has stated repeatedly, impunity encourages the chronic repetition of human rights violations.379 293. The Court considers that, in the instant case, the shortcomings and omissions common to all the investigations reveal that the State authorities failed to act with due diligence and in accordance with the obligations arising from Articles 8(1) and 25(1) of the Convention concerning the obligation to investigate. XI RIGHT TO PERSONAL INTEGRITY OF THE NEXT OF KIN IN RELATION TO THE OBLIGATION TO RESPECT RIGHTS A. Arguments of the parties 294. The Inter-American Commission argued that the impact on the mental and moral integrity of the members of the Barrios family was twofold, as regards: (a) the immediate family of each of the alleged victims who were murdered, owing to the particular gravity of the violent events, and (b) the Barrios family as a whole, owing to the context of the case. 295. Regarding the harm to the right to integrity of the immediate family of the seven members of the Barrios family who lost their life,380 the Commission considered that “the mere loss of a loved one as a result of the arbitrary use of force by security agents, in a permanent context of threat and vulnerability, followed also by the failure to elucidate the facts and their impunity,” are elements that allow the violation of the right to integrity of the immediate family of the deceased to be inferred.” In addition, it stated that the investigations in these cases “have not taken into account that the facts occurred in a broader context of harassment against the family,” which has resulted in greater vulnerability for its members. Therefore, the Commission concluded that the State was responsible for the violation of the right to mental and moral integrity established in Article 5(1) of the American Convention, in relation to Article 1(1) of this instrument, to the detriment of the immediate family (parents, siblings, children, life companions) of Benito Antonio Barrios, Narciso Barrios, Luis Alberto Barrios, Rigoberto Barrios and Oscar José Barrios. 296. Moreover, regarding the effect on the mental and moral integrity of all the members of the Barrios family,381 the Commission considered that the “pattern of persecution against [the family] has been characterized by a sequence of violent events of a greater and lesser degree,” and by the consequent extreme lack of protection and vulnerability in which the 379 Cf. Case of the “White Van” (Paniagua Morales et al.), supra note 12, para. 173, and Case of Garibaldi, supra note 220, para. 111. 380 In the Report on Merits, the Inter-American Commission referred to the immediate next of kin of the five members of the family who had lost their life at that time, namely: Benito Antonio, Narciso, Luis Alberto, Rigoberto and Oscar Jose Barrios, because Wilmer José Flores Barrios and Juan José Barrios died after this report had been presented on September 1, 2010, and May 28, 2011, respectively. 381 The Inter-American Commission clarified that these family members are those individualized at that date in the proceedings before the Inter-American Commission, indicated in the genealogical tree sent by the Commission, except for Brígido Solórzano who died on September 2, 1998, and Benito Antonio Barrios who was the first member of the Barrios family to be executed, in the absence of evidence of threats prior to that time. 93