from this that the Court has jurisdiction to declare a violation of the right to work, as
already explained.
21.
In the judgment, state responsibility was declared based on the consideration
that during the selection process in which Mr. Guevara Díaz participated, he was
treated differently to his detriment based on his intellectual disability, without an
objective and reasonable justification. This violated his rights to equal protection
before the law and to work, recognized in articles 24 and 26 of the ACHR, read in
conjunction with the obligations to respect and guarantee. I agree with the
considerations expressed in the judgment, with the exception of those referring to
the direct violation of the right to work based on Article 26, as indicated above.
22.
It should be borne in mind that paragraphs 78, 79, and 82 of the judgment
indicate that it was proven that Mr. Guevara was not selected for the position of
Miscellaneous Worker 1 due to his status as a person with an intellectual disability,
without the state adequately justifying its decision. This without question violates the
state’s duty to prohibit all manner of discrimination against persons belonging to
particularly vulnerable groups. But that same fact is classified as a violation of Mr.
Guevara’s right to work, without specifying any other fact that by itself violates the
right that is said to be protected by Article 26 of the Convention. It is not in dispute
that the state’s conduct fails to comply with the duty of non-discrimination and the
duty to adopt measures to achieve material equality for persons who belong to
especially vulnerable groups, such as persons with disabilities, but the judgment does
not explain the way in which that conduct produced an autonomous violation of the
victim's right to work. In short, what the sentence does is establish the violation of
the right to work based on the same fact and grounds that were used to establish
the violation of the right to equal protection and non-discrimination, and we thus find
ourselves within the same scope of protection. Of course, a fact can give rise to the
violation of one or more rights of the Convention, but for it to be possible to declare
such violations, the rights must be justiciable before the Court.
23.
This approach impacts the legal certainty that an international court must
guarantee and the legitimacy of its decisions, since the arguments put forward ignore
a norm that does not grant the Court competence to hear possible violations of the
right to work.
24.
Lastly, I think that in this judgment, a valuable opportunity was lost to weigh
the content of the right to equal protection and non-discrimination and the impacts
of its violation. The exclusion of people with disabilities is one of the main problems
posed by the classic contractarian theories of justice.17 The multiple difficulties they
face in order to be treated as equals in terms of consideration and respect are
obstacles that prevent them from exercising authentic citizenship. In this particular
case, Mr. Guevara Díaz's application was evaluated based on a stereotyped notion of
his abilities due to his intellectual disability. This was evidence of the presence of
attitudinal barriers blocking his inclusion, proving that, under the social model of
disability, his inclusion is “positional” in the sense that it depends on his interaction
with the social obstacles to a persons’ ability to exercise their rights. Many times the
source of these negative attitudes comes from the general ignorance about disability,
its manifestations, and its issues, as well as about its potentialities. Sometimes, this
disinformation is accompanied by indifference or, by an attitude that is directly
detrimental to people with disabilities, as happened in this case. In this sense, one
of the main challenges societies face is educational, since effective learning and
inclusion help break down prejudices in the understanding that diversity is not a
NUSSBAUM, Martha: Las fronteras de la justicia. Consideraciones sobre la exclusión, Paidós,
Barcelona, (2007), pp.34-38.
17
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