10
organization, and inherent to human beings, were confirmed as opposable to public power
itself.
33.
Human being’s international legal personality was defined as a limit to the free
judgment of the State’s power. Human rights definitely opened the subjective law’s conception
of the ties of legal positivism. Yes, on one hand, the juridical category of human beings’
international legal personality contributed to the instrumentalization of the vindication of the
rights of human beings, which arise from International Law, - on the other hand the corpus
juris of universal human rights provided the individual’s legal personality with a much more
ample dimension, no longer conditioned by the right that results from the State’s public
power.35
34.
It is important to mention here the contribution, regarding the intangibility of the
international legal personality of human beings, of the 17th Advisory Opinion of the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights, on the Juridical Condition and Human Rights of the Child (of
08.28.2002): the Court made it clear that the Law necessarily acknowledges the legal
personality of all human being (whether it is a child or teenager), regardless of their existential
condition or of the scope of their legal capacity to exercise their rights for themselves (capacity
to exercise). In effect, the acknowledgment and consolidation of the human being’s position as
a full subject of International Human Rights Law constitutes, in our days, - as I have been
stating for several years, - an unequivocal and eloquent statement of the advances in the
ongoing process of humanization of International Law itself (jus gentium).36
5.
The Conceptualization of Victim and the Contribution of International
Human Rights Law.
35.
The victim is the human being victimized in the rights inherent qua person. The
conceptualization of victim, the same as that of person (supra), has its historical roots
throughout the centuries. Etymologically, the term victim (from the Latin victima) was
originally used with regard to the person that was sacrificed (in rituals) or destined to be
sacrificed. As of the XVII century, it acquired the sense of the person injured, tortured, or
murdered by another. In the XVIII century, the term went on to refer to the person injured or
oppressed by another, or by any power or situation. The term “victimize” was used in the XIX
century (as of 1830).37 In the XX century, the new discipline of victimology focused its
attention on the victim,38 - in opposition to criminology, which was focused on the criminal.
.
A.A. Cançado Trindade, "A Consolidação da Personalidade e da Capacidade Jurídicas do
Indivíduo...", op. cit. supra n. (33), pp. 280-281; A.A. Cançado Trindade, "La Persona Humana como
Sujeto del Derecho Internacional: Avances de Su Capacidad Jurídica Internacional en la Primera Década
del Siglo XXI", in Jornadas de Derecho Internacional (Buenos Aires, November 2006), Washington D.C.,
OAS/ General Secretariat, 2007, pages 246-249.
35
. Cf., among my various articles in this sense, e.g., A.A. Can��ado Trindade, A Humanização do Direito
Internacional, Belo Horizonte/Brasil, Edit. Del Rey, 2006, pages 3-409.
36
37
. Cf. The Oxford English Dictionary, 2a. ed., tomo XIX, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989, p. 607;
Asociación H. Capitant, Vocabulario Jurídico (dir. G. Cornu), Bogotá, Temis, 1995, p. 904; G. Gómez de
Silva, Breve Diccionario Etimológico de la Lengua Española, México, El Colegio de México/FCE, 1996
[reimpr.], page 719.
.
Cf. E. Neuman, Victimología - El Rol de la Víctima en los Delitos Convencionales y No
Convencionales, Buenos Aires, Edit. Universidad, 1994, pages 27-28.
38
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