13
37.
The day when the work of determining the reparations due to the victims of
violations of fundamental human rights were to be reduced exclusively to a simple
fixing of compensations in the form of indemnizations, one would no longer need the
knowledge patiently acquired, assimilated and accumulated throughtout years of
readings, studies and reflection: to that end, a calculating machine would suffice. The
day this were to occur, - which I hope will never come, - the labour itself of an
international tribunal of human rights would be irremediably devoid of all sense. Article
63(1) of the American Convention, on the contrary, renders it possible, and requires,
that reparations be enlarged, and not reduced, in their multiplicity of forms. The fixing
of reparations ought to be based on the consideration of the victim as an integral
human being, and not on the degraded perspective of the homo oeconomicus of our
days.
38.
The petitioners themselves and the legal representatives of the victims or their
relatives will know to keep always in mind that there are superior values which ought to
be affirmed and vindicated; the concern for the prominence of such values ought to
have primacy over the claim of indemnizations, also to fulfill the personal needs - other
than material - of the (surviving) victims themselves or their relatives. In the public
hearing before this Court, of 12 March 2001, in the case of the Street Children, the
witness Mrs. Reyna Dalila Villagrán Morales lucidly pointed out, in respect of the pain of
the impact of the murder of her son upon herself and her family, that "not even all the
gold of the world, (...) nor what most valuable might exist in the world, will relieve us
of the suffering we feel for having lost him"41. The life and the integrity of each human
being effectively have no price. The liberty of conscience, the protection of the honour
and of the dignity of the human person have no price either. And nor does human pain
or suffering. The evil perpetrated in the persons of the (direct and indirect) victims is
not removed by the reparations: the victims continue being victims, before and after
the reparations, - and this requires a greater importance to be attributed to the
measures in favour of their rehabilitation.
39.
With regard, in particular, to the close relatives of the direct victims of violations
of human rights, I fear that only through the intense suffering that is accepted (which
seems to me to have above all a self-didactic effect) they will be able, as indirect
victims, in face of the loss of a beloved person, aggravated by the extreme violence, to
reconstruct their interior life, - which is the sole safe place where each one can find
droit à la vie - Quarante ans après l'adoption de la Déclaration Universelle des Droits de l'Homme: Évolution
conceptuelle, normative et jurisprudentielle, Genève, CID, 1992, pp. 1-91; A.A. Cançado Trindade, "Human
Rights and the Environment", Human Rights: New Dimensions and Challenges (ed. J. Symonides),
Paris/Aldershot, UNESCO/Dartmouth, 1998, pp. 117-153; F. Przetacznik, "The Right to Life as a Basic Human
Right", 9 Revue des droits de l'homme/Human Rights Journal (1976) pp. 585-609. And cf. the general
comments ns. 6/1982 and 14/1984 of the Human Rights Committee (under the United Nations Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights), reproduced in: United Nations, Compilation of General Comments and General
Recommendations Adopted by Human Rights Treaty Bodies, U.N. doc. HRI/GEN/1/Rev. 3, del 15.08.1997, pp.
6-7 and 18-19.
41
.
Cf. IACtHR, Transcripción de la Audiencia Pública de 12 de Marzo de 2001 sobre Reparaciones en el
Caso Villagrán Morales y Otros, p. 48 (unpublished document). - In a public hearing (of 09.06.1998) on
reparations in another case before the Inter-American Court, the victim, Mrs. María Elena Loayza Tamayo,
pronounced in the same sense, pointing out that she was conscious that the "economic indemnization" would
not redress the whole damage that she suffered. IACtHR, Transcripción de la Audiencia Pública Celebrada en
la Sede de la Corte el 09 de Junio de 1998 sobre las Reparaciones en el Caso Loayza Tamayo, p. 34, and cf.
pp. 60-61 (unpublished document).
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