CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE SERGIO GARCIA-RAMIREZ TO THE JUDGMENT IN YATAMA v. NICARAGUA OF JUNE 23, 2005 A) Categories of violations. Individuals and members of groups or communities 1. The Inter-American Court has heard cases concerning isolated violations committed against individuals, which may be reduced to one specific case or reveal a pattern of behavior and suggest measures designed to avoid renewed violations of a similar kind against many people. The Court has also heard cases of violations that affect numerous members of a human group and reflect attitudes or situations with a general scope and even deep historical roots. 2. This second category of issues leads to reflections, based on a specific case and certain individualized victims, on the situation of the members of this group and even the group itself, without in any way exceeding the jurisdictional attributes of the Inter-American Court, since each decision refers to a concrete presumption and decides on it, even though it may lead to reflections and criteria that could be useful for examining other similar situations. If these are posed before the same jurisdiction, they would be examined individually, but case law elaborated on other occasions would contribute to this examination. 3. Furthermore, the idea that case law, which is rationally developed, pondered and reiterated – until it constitutes “consistent case law” – can be extended to situations with the same conditions de facto and de jure that have determined it, is entirely consequent with the work of an international treaty-based tribunal, such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which is called on to apply the American Convention on Human Rights and other multilateral instruments that grant it material jurisdiction. 4. The regional human rights tribunal is not another instance for the review of resolutions of judicial bodies, but a unique international instance, created to define the scope of the human rights contained in the American Convention, by applying and interpreting it. The Convention itself has established this, and the Court has understood it likewise, and this is recognized with increasing uniformity and emphasis, by the highest courts of the countries of the Americas, whose acceptance of the Inter-American Court’s case law is one of the most recent, valuable and encouraging characteristics of the development of the jurisdictional protection of human rights throughout the continent. 5. The Court’s deliberations are described in all the cases submitted to its consideration, and also in the advisory opinions it issues. They have acquired their greatest importance in cases concerning members of minority groups – generally, indigenous and ethnic communities – present in different national societies, when examining factors relating to elimination, exclusion, marginalization or “containment.” These are expressions or elements of the violation of rights exercised with different levels of intensity. They follow the same line of conduct and reveal different moments of the historical processes of which they form part. They possess specific characteristics and imply a violation or an imminent risk of violation of the principles of equality and non-discrimination, in different areas of social life. They translate into the violation of numerous rights. 6. When examining these cases, the Court has always recalled the objective