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commitments made by the States Parties" (Article 33 of the American Convention),
these latter undertake to abide by what is approved in its Reports. This being so,
Guatemala, as a State Party to the Convention, will certainly not only comply with
the provisions of the present Judgment of the Court, but also bear in mind bona
fide the considerations of the other supervisory organ of the American Convention,
and the other conventional obligations pertaining to the rights protected by the
American Convention, which ensue from its ratification of this latter.
37.
Finally, as to the violations of the judicial guarantees and the right to
mental and moral integrity (Articles 8(1) and 5, respectively, in relation to Article
1(1), of the American Convention) to the detriment of the next of kin of Nicholas
Chapman Blake, as established in the present Judgment of the Court, I allow myself
to add one brief and last thought. Herein lies, in my understanding, the contribution
of the Judgment that the Inter-American Court has just rendered to the
development of the jurisprudential treatment of the crime of forced disappearance
of person, to the extent that it gives precision to the position of the next of kin of
the disappeared person as subjects (titulaires) of the rights protected by the
American Convention.
38.
In a continuing situation proper to the forced disappearance of person, the
victims are the disappeared person (main victim) as well as his next of kin; the
indefinition generated by the forced disappearance withdraws all from the
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protection of the law . The condition of victims cannot be denied also to the next
of kin of the disappeared person, who have their day-to-day life transformed into a
true calvary, in which the memories of the person dear to them are intermingled
with the permanent torment of his forced disappearance. In my understanding, the
complex form of violation of multiple human rights which the crime of forced
disappearance of person represents has as a consequence the enlargement of the
notion of victim of violation of the protected rights.
Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade
Judge
Manuel E. Ventura-Robles
Secretary
27.
Cf., in this sense, Article 1(2) of the United Nations Declaration on the Protection of
All Persons against Forced Disappearances.