law, and that the State “should have provided [M] with special measures of protection” owing to her condition as a child. They added that the legal guardianship proceedings exceeded a reasonable time and stated that the judge in charge of the case acted “with wrongful intent,” systematically obstructing the actions of Mr. Fornerón and his mother. They added that the proceeding on visiting rights “repeated the arbitrariness and inaction of the courts of Entre Ríos,” affirming that “[t]he claim has lasted more than 10 years and again it is the passage of time, according to the agents of justice, that has prevent[ed] the meeting between [M] and her father.” Mr. Fornerón’s claim “was never heard, which has prevented him from having real access to justice.” In all the judicial proceedings in which the rights of M and Mr. Fornerón should have been protected, “the judges failed to respect due process and, thus, delayed in an arbitrary and unjustified manner, their decisions in order to let time pass, which caused and continues to cause their separation, violating Articles 8, 25 and 19 of [the Convention].”65 62. The State indicated that both the Secretariat for Children and the Family, and two Ministers of Justice and Human Rights of the Nations had ruled on the failure of the judicial authorities to observe the provisions of the Constitution and international human rights treaties with constitutional rank (supra paras. 55 to 57). Despite this, regarding the proceedings on the visiting regime, Argentina indicated that the case file “revealed sporadic presentations by the representatives of [Mr.] Fornerón and several briefs confuse the purpose of the [litis], because they refer to ‘return’ when, in reality, what was being processed was a visiting regime.” It added that to protect the rights of Mr. Fornerón, the Minister of Justice had asked the National Director for Legal Affairs in the area of Human Rights to appear formally in the case, so that he could be present in the interview between the child’s psychologist, proposed by the couple B-Z, and the biological father. The judge in charge of the case denied this request, “because the applicant lacked legal standing, but fundamentally owing to the inflexibility of the position assumed by Mr. Fornerón,” which the State emphasized because “the brief [… of Mr.] Fornerón’s representatives questioned why the State had not appealed this refusal, as if, should the State have done so, which was not viable procedurally, the answer would have been different.” 63. In addition, the State referred to the “gradual re-connection” process initiated at the request of the Minister of Justice and Human Rights in 2008, whose intervention led to several measures at the domestic level. The provincial prosecutor considered that it was not feasible for the Provincial Executive to file judicial proceedings to revoke the adoption because the respective procedural time frames had expired. Argentina stressed that “Mr. Fornerón’s lawyer […] declined […] to file the respective complaint, which could have avoided reaching this level.” It added that the complexity of the case stems from the fact that “the biological father is claiming the return of his daughter at the international level, [but] at the domestic level, when the judicial proceedings on guardianship for the purpose of adoption were processed, the decision that was finally adopted by the court concerned was not contested at all domestic levels.” 64. Lastly, the State indicated that, in the context of the Executive’s attempts to achieve a rapprochement, there were several stages. During the said process, “the Ministry of Justice made available technical, psychological and legal teams to monitor [this, up until the last] stage that began in 2010 when, owing to the absence of effective communication, the Executive insisted in its efforts with the province of Entre Ríos and, within that framework, the province intervened to achieve or to try and achieve a rapprochement between father 65 In their brief with final arguments, the representatives referred to specific irregularities in which the judge of the case incurred concerning the precautionary measures requested by the prosecutor. This affirmation corresponds to a new argument that was not mentioned previously during the proceedings before the Court. 21

Seleccionar párrafo de destino3