3 9. A person who in his childhood lives, as in so many countries of Latin America, in the humiliation of misery, without even the minimum condition of creating his project of life, experiences a state of suffering which amounts to a spiritual death; the physical death which follows to this latter, in such circumstances, is the culmination of the total destruction of the human being. These offences render victims not only those who suffered them directly, in their spirit and in their body; they project themselves painfully into the persons dear to them, in particular into their mothers, who usually also endure the state of abandonment. To the suffering of the violent loss of their sons is added the indifference with which the mortal remains of these latter are treated. 10. In circumstances such as those of the present case, as this Court has acknowledged (pars. 174-177), it is impossible not to include, in the enlarged notion of victim, the mothers of the murdered children56. The outlook which we sustain corresponds to beliefs which are deeply-rooted in the cultures of the peoples of Latin America, in the sense that the definitive death of a human being in the spiritual order is only consumed with the oblivion. The children murdered in a street and in a wood (ironically the wood of San Nicolás, of so much symbolism to many children), did not have the opportunity to reconcile themselves with the idea of their surrender to eternity; the respect to the mortal remains of the children contributes to provide their mothers, at least, with the opportunity to maintain alive, within themselves, the memory of the sons prematurely disappeared. 11. In the face of the imperative of the protection of human life, and of the concerns and thoughts aroused by death, it is very difficult to separate dogmatically the considerations of juridical order from those of moral order: we are before an order of superior values, - substratum of legal norms, - which help us to seek out the meaning of the existence and of the destiny of each human being. The International Law of Human Rights, in its evolution, on the eve of the year 2000, definitively ought not to remain insensible or indifferent to these questions. Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade Judge Alirio Abreu-Burelli Judge Manuel E. Ventura-Robles Secretary 5. In relation to Article 5.2 of the American Convention on Human Rights.