CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE A.A. CANÇADO TRINDADE 1. I am voting in favor of the adoption of the present Judgment of the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights in the case of the “Juvenile Reeducation Institute” vs. Paraguay. This judgment follows the same line of reasoning that the Court introduced in the now historic and paradigmatic case of the “Street Children” vs. Guatemala (Villagrán Morales et al., 1999-2001) and depicts a reality that is everyday life across Latin America (and other regions of the world). The case also demonstrates that the human conscience has evolved to the point where justice can be done and the rights of even the most vulnerable elements of society protected by granting them, like any other human being, direct access to an international court to lay claim to their rights, as plaintiffs with full standing. With regard to the present Judgment that the Court has just adopted, I feel compelled to share my thoughts on two points in order to explain my position on the matter. I refer, specifically, to the questions of the subjectivity [titularité] of rights in extremely adverse situations, and the broad scope of due process of law. I. Subjectivity [titularité] of rights in extremely adverse situations 2. The Case of the “Street Children”, which this Court concluded three years ago, pointed up how important it is that individuals be allowed direct access to international courts. This enables them to assert their rights against abuses of power and endows domestic public law and international law with an ethical content, a fact made clear to this Court in the course of the contentious proceedings in the Case of the “Street Children”, where the mothers of the murdered children, who were as poor and forsaken as their children had been in life, were able to turn to an international court, appear at the proceedings1 and, thanks to this Court’s judgments on the merits and reparations2 which supported their claims, were at least able to recoup their faith in human justice. 3. Now, three years later, this Case of the “Juvenile Reeducation Institute” once again demonstrates that even in the most adverse circumstances, the human being emerges as the subject of the International Law of Human Rights, endowed with full procedural standing in an international court. The individual’s right of recourse to international justice is realized in the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court. An important step in that regard was taken last year in the Court’s Judgment in the Five Pensioners vs. Peru (February 28, 2003), which made clear the broad scope of the right of recourse to the courts (at both the domestic and international levels3): that right is not reduced to formal access, stricto sensu, to the judicial instance; the right of effective recourse to a competent court or tribunal means, lato sensu, the right to obtain justice, i.e., an autonomous right to the very realization of justice. 1 2 3 Public hearings before this Court on January 28 and 29, 1999, and March 12, 2001. Of November 19, 1999 and May 26, 2001, respectively. For a study on this subject, see A.A. Cançado Trindade, El Acceso Directo del Individuo a los Tribunales Internacionales de Derechos Humanos, Bilbao, Universidad de Deusto, 2001, pp. 9-104; A.A. Cançado Trindade, "Vers la consolidation de la capacité juridique internationale des pétitionnaires dans le système interaméricain des droits de la personne", 14 Revue québécoise de droit international - Montreal (2001) n. 2, pp. 207-239.