5
International Law of Human Rights" (par. 91). Beyond that, there remains the question of the
evolving condition of peoples themselves as subjects of international law14.
III.
Uprootedness as a Human Rights Problem Confronting the
Juridical Conscience.
Universal
13.
The State-planned massacre of 1986 that originated the present case of the Moiwana
Community versus Suriname also gave rise to displacement of former residents in the Moiwana
village, besides those who sought refugee in French Guyana. They have endured this drama of
social and family disruption for almost two decades. The tragedy of uprootedness, manifested
in the present case, cannot pass unnoticed here, as uprootedness (desarraigo) affects
ultimately the right to cultural identity, which conforms the material or substantive content of
the right to life lato sensu itself.
14.
In this connection, in a lecture I delivered at the Convent of San Carlos and San
Ambrosio in Havana, Cuba, on 28 November 2000, in addressing the traumas generated by
the forced displacements and consequent uprootedness of so many human beings nowadays, I
saw it fit to recall the warning, formulated by Simone Weil already in the mid-XXth century, to
the effect that to be rooted was "perhaps the most important and least recognized necessity of
the human soul", and one of the "most difficult to define"15. In the same epoch and the same
line of thinking, Hannah Arendt likewise warned against "the sufferings of the uprooted (the
loss of home and familiarity of day-to-day life, the loss of profession and the feeling of
usefulness to the others, the loss of the mother-tongue as a spontaneous expression of the
sentiments)"; she further warned against the illusion of "trying to forget the past (given the
influence exerted over each one by his ancestors, the previous generations)"16.
15.
And still in the same thinking, J.-M. Domenach observed in the mid-sixties that it would
not be possible to deny the roots of the human spirit itself, as the very form of aquisition of
knowledge, on the part of each human being, - and consequently of his perception of the
world, - was to a large extent conditioned by factors such as the place of birth, the mothertongue, the cults, the family and the culture17. On the occasion, on my part I characterized
uprootedness as a human rights problem confronting the universal juridical conscience18.
. For general studies, cf., e.g., P. Thornberry, Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights,
Manchester, University Press, 2002, pp. 1-429; S. James Anaya, Indigenous Peoples in
International Law, 2nd. ed., Oxford, University Press, 2004, pp. 3-291; J. Castellino and N.
Walsh (eds.), International Law and Indigenous Peoples, Leiden, Nijhoff, 2005, pp. 89-116 and
249-267.
14
. S. Weil, The Need for Roots, London/N.Y., Routledge, 1952 (reprint 1995), p. 41.
15
. H. Arendt, La tradition cachée, Paris, Ch. Bourgois Éd., 1987 (ed. orig. 1946), pp. 58-59 y
125-127.
16
. J.-M. Domenach, Le retour du tragique, Paris, Éd. Seuil, 1967, p. 285.
17
. A.A. Cançado Trindade, "Reflexiones sobre el Desarraigo como Problema de Derechos
Humanos frente a la Conciencia Jurídica Universal", in La Nueva Dimensión de las Necesidades
18
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