PARTIALLY DISSENTING OPINION OF JUDGE A. ABREU BURELLI 1. When we voted on the merits in the “Yakye Axa indigenous community” case, I stated my dissent regarding operative paragraph 4 in which the Court declared that it “does not have sufficient evidence to find a violation of the Right to life enshrined in Article 4(1) of the American Convention on Human Rights, against sixteen members of the Yakye Axa indigenous community […]”. 2. Since the judgment on the merits in the Villagrán Morales et al. vs. Guatemala case (November 1999), the Court has repeatedly stated that the right to life involves not only the negative obligation to not deprive anyone of their life arbitrarily, but also the positive obligation to take steps to ensure that said basic right is not abridged. Said interpretation of the right to life, to encompass measures of protection by the State, is supported today both by international jurisprudence and by legal doctrine. 3. It has been said, with regard to these criteria of the Court, that the right to life can no longer be viewed in a restrictive manner, as it was in the past, regarding not only the prohibition to arbitrarily deprive of physical life. There are various ways to deprive an individual of life arbitrarily: when the person’s death is directly caused by the unlawful act of homicide, and when circumstances that can likewise lead to a person’s death are not avoided, especially in the case of vulnerable individuals, with regard to whom life, before losing it physically, lacked meaning, because they had lost the possibility of developing their life aspirations and even of finding a meaning for their own existence. 1 4. It has also been deemed that this broad interpretation of the right to life under the American Convention (Article 4 in combination with Article 1(1)) is in accordance with the evolutionary interpretation of international rules on protection of the rights of human beings. “In the last years, the conditions of life of large segments of the population of the States Parties to the American Convention have deteriorated notoriously, and an interpretation of the right to life cannot make abstraction of this reality,” 2 especially with regard to vulnerable persons: children, the elderly, and destitute persons. 5. The Court has likewise deemed, in other judgments, in the cases of the “Instituto de Reeducación del Menor”, on September 2, 2004, “Gómez Paquiyuari brothers,” July 8, 2004, that the right to life is fundamental in the American Convention, as realization of other rights depends on safeguarding the right to life. When it is not respected, all the other rights disappear, as the person entitled to them is extinguished. In view of this fundamental nature, approaches that restrict the right to life are inadmissible. The Court has essentially asserted that this right encompasses not only the right of all human beings to not be arbitrarily deprived of their life, but also the right to not be subjected to conditions that impede or make it difficult to enjoy a decent existence. Case of the “Street Children” (Villagrán Morales et al.) vs. Guatemala. Concurring Opinion of Judges A.A. Cançado Trindade and A. Abreu Burelli. 1 2 Idem.