on its own, the model established by covenant, and embodied in the International
Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.
26.
Seen from this perspective, the increase in poverty is a result of decisions,
basically of an economic and financial nature, taken by private actors and agreed to
by public actors who have much more power than the States of developing countries.
This is the context in which the responsibilities of the transnational corporations and
multilateral agencies for violations of economic, social and cultural rights must be
analyzed. Thus, the Commission on Human Rights, while recognizing that poverty
threatens the fundamental right to life, has asked that the policies of the World
Bank, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and other
international organizations be examined.
27.
Progress in international human rights law requires the international
community to understand that poverty, particularly extreme poverty, is a way of
denying all the human, civil, political, economic, and cultural rights, and act
accordingly, in order to facilitate the identification of perpetrators who bear
international responsibility. The system of economic growth related to a form of
globalization that impoverishes growing sectors, is a “massive, flagrant, and
systematic [way of] violating human rights,” in an increasingly interdependent world.
In this interpretation of the right to life, which parallels the changing times and
current living conditions, attention should be given to the causes of extreme poverty
and to the perpetrators behind them. In this perspective, the international
responsibilities of the State of Paraguay and of the other signatories of the American
Convention do not cease, but they are shared with the international community
which requires new instruments.
IV. Dissenting opinion. Recognition of the Right to Juridical Personality
28.
The Commission argued (para. 245) that the State has not implemented
mechanisms that provide the members of the Community with “the identity
documents required to exercise their right to recognition of juridical personality.” It
indicated that, according to the 2008 census, at least 43 of the 273 members of the
Community did not possess identity documents; of these, at least 32 were minors.
29.
The representatives added that “the large number of Xákmok Kásek
individuals who do not have documents […] prevents them from legally proving their
existence and identity.”
30.
In my opinion, these documentation shortcomings affected many of the
communities and not only the indigenous people of Xákmok Kásek, owing to the lack
of budgetary resources; however, they were alleviated by the indigenous “identity
card,” issued by INDI.
31.
This Institute responded to the requests of the community whenever vehicles
and fuel were available.
V. Dissenting
discriminate
opinion.
Non-compliance
with
the
obligation
not
to
32.
The Commission argued that “this case illustrates the persistence of structural
discrimination factors in the Paraguayan legal system regarding the protection of
their right to the ownership of ancestral territory and the resources found on it”;
6