2 December 1992, without pretending to be exhaustive, devotes an article to enunciating the rights violated by disappearances and heads this list with the right to recognition of juridical personality (Article 1(2)). The 1994 Inter-American Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons - the first international conventional instrument against this scourge - abstains, however, from making that type of statement, although in a “whereas clause” it indicates that forced disappearance violates numerous essential, non-derogable human rights. As regards the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court, an interesting point should be emphasized. In two of its notable judgments in the “Honduran cases” (Velásquez Rodríguez and Godínez Cruz), the Court abstained from declaring that Article 3 of the American Convention, which refers to juridical personality, had been violated, on the occasion of separate cases of forced disappearance of persons. In other words, it restricted the scope of forced disappearance to the violation of Article 7 (right to personal liberty), Article 5 (right to humane treatment) and Article 4 (right to life) of the said Convention. Twelve years later, in the judgment in the Trujillo Oroza case, referring to a forced disappearance that occurred in Bolivia this time, the Court declared that, in addition to Articles 4, 5 and 7 of the above-mentioned international instrument, its Article 3 had also been violated. However, it should be noted that this declaration was made, as the judgment itself says, “pursuant to the terms of the State's recognition of responsibility”, and that the Court did not construct an explicit reasoning on the basic juridical question to which we have been referring. Behind the recurring question of whether forced disappearance of persons violates the right to recognition of juridical personality, we find, among other issues, concern about the fact that certain very aggressive and offensive aspects of the corresponding conduct are not covered by the scope of the provisions on the rights to liberty, humane treatment and life. Forced disappearance is characterized, among other matters, by creating a situation of overwhelming uncertainty about whether the victim is alive or dead; in other words, about whether he continues or has ceased to exist. This situation arises from the fact that the authors of the disappearance, not only cut off all forms of communication between the person who has disappeared and the society to which he belongs, but also eliminate any trace or information, about either the survival or death of the person in question (except for the mere passage of time as a growing sign of the probability that the victim is dead). In other words, the abductors create a state of uncertainty about the existence of the person who has disappeared 2. The Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance of the General Assembly of the United Nations and the Inter-American Convention on the Forced Disappearance of Persons, clearly capture this aspect of the scourge, which is related to a radical disinformation of the social environment of the person who has disappeared with regard to his whereabouts, and survival or death. Consequently, according to those instruments, the fight against this is mainly engaged in the area of recording and conserving information on persons who are at risk of being disappeared, and in reconstructing the lost thread of information about the fate and 2 The motives that lead to this are fairly complex. Despite what is usually said, it is not only a case of eliminating evidence in order to guarantee the impunity of the abductors. It is also, among other matters, a question of breaking the resistance of the victim through torture, making him feel that he has lost all hope, taking the aggression against the victim to limits that go beyond death, by disrespecting and hiding his corpse, and, above all, terrorizing and immobilizing the groups and communities that make up the social environment of the disappeared person.