SEPARATE OPINION OF JUDGE A.A. CANÇADO TRINDADE 1. I have voted in favour of the present Judgment on reparations in the case Blake versus Guatemala which the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has just adopted, for considering it in accordance with the applicable law, and bearing in mind what was previously resolved by the Court in the Judgments on preliminary objections (of 02.07.1996) and on the merits (of 24.01.1998). I understand, nevertheless, that the decision of the Court, in conformity with the law stricto sensu, does not keep a direct relationship with the gravity of the facts which took place in the present Blake case; therefore, just as I have done in my Separate Opinions in the two previous Judgments above-mentioned, I feel obliged to express, in this new Separate Opinion, my concerns and thoughts on the outcome of the Blake case, which I develop in this Judgment on reparations fully convinced that only through the transformation of the existing law one will achieve the realization of justice in circumstances such as those raised in the present Blake case of forced disappearance of person. 2. In fact, the present Blake case, perhaps more than any other case before the Inter-American Court to date, has revealed the ineluctable tension between the postulates of the law of treaties, in the framework of Public International Law, and those of the International Law of Human Rights. This tension originated itself in the limitation ratione temporis of the contentious jurisdiction of the Court, resulting from the temporal intersection - in the consideration of the intertwined facts of the continuing situation of the forced disappearance of Mr. Nicholas Chapman Blake operated by the incidence of the date of acceptance on the part of Guatemala of the contentious jurisdiction of the Court. 3. The juridical tragedy - as I see it - of the present Blake case lies in that, by the application of a classic postulate of the law of treaties, the crime of forced disappearance of persons was unduly disfigured and fragmented, with clear repercussions in the present Judgment of reparations. This occurs despite all the endeavours which resulted in the recent tipification, at international level, of such disappearance as a "continuing or permanent" crime "as long as the fate or the whereabouts of the victim has not been determined" (Inter-American Convention on the Forced Disappearance of Persons of 1994, Article III), as a complex form of violation of human rights (with related criminal acts) to be understood pursuant to a necessarily integral approach (in the light of Articles IV and II, and the Preamble, of that Convention). 4. This occurs precisely at a moment in which contemporary legal doctrine, - as I pointed out in my two previous Separate Opinions in the present case, - strives to achieve the establishment of a true international regime against grave violations of human rights (such as torture, forced or involuntary disappearance of persons, and extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions). Moreover, as I added in my Separate Opinion (paragraph 21) in the Judgment on the merits, there is an element