responsibility of the State for every fact or act involving private individuals, because its duty to adopt measures of prevention and to protect private individuals in their relations among themselves is conditioned by its awareness of a situation of real and immediate risk for a specific individual or group of individuals and the reasonable possibilities of preventing or avoiding that risk. In other words, even though an act or omission of a private individual may have the legal consequence of the violation of certain human rights of another private individual, this cannot be automatically attributed to the State, because it is necessary to take into account the specific circumstances of the case and whether the said obligation to guarantee rights has been met.454 324. For the purposes of analyzing this specific case, however, the Court’s consistent case law determines that, in order to establish the State’s responsibility it is necessary to establish whether “at the time of the facts, the State authorities were aware or should have been aware of the existence of a situation that involved a real and immediate risk to the life of an individual or a group of individuals, and failed to take the necessary measures that fell within the scope of their authority to prevent or avoid that risk.” 325. In this regard, in this case, the Court has verified the State’s negligence and a series of shortcomings as regards preventing the occurrence of servitude, trafficking and slavery in its territory prior to 2000, but also following the specific report filed by the adolescents, Antônio Francisco da Silva and Gonçalo Luiz Furtado. 326. Since 1988, the Comissão Pastoral da Terra has filed various complaints concerning the existence of a situation similar to slavery in the state of Pará and, specifically, in Hacienda Brasil Verde. These complaints identified a modus operandi for the recruitment and exploitation of workers in the specific area in the south of the state of Pará. The State was aware of this situation because, as a result of these complaints, inspections of Hacienda Brasil Verde were conducted in 1989, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 1999 and 2000. During several of these inspections, labor law violations were verified, together with degrading living and working conditions, and situations similar to slavery. These verifications resulted in the opening of labor and criminal proceedings; however, such proceedings were ineffective to prevent the situation verified in March 2000.455 Also, given the frequent complaints, the seriousness of the facts denounced, and the special obligation of prevention imposed on the State in relation to slavery, the State should have increased the inspections in this hacienda in order to eradicate the practice of slavery in this establishment. 327. Moreover, in addition to the known risk described above, the actual situation of risk was verified when the youths Antônio Francisco da Silva and Gonçalo Luiz Furtado were able to escape from Hacienda Brasil Verde and went to the Marabá Federal Police. On that occasion, after receiving the report of the adolescents about the offenses that were occurring in this hacienda, the fact that Antônio Francisco da Silva was still a minor, and the seriousness of the facts reported, the police merely indicated that they not could assist them because it was carnival time, and advised them to return two days later. This attitude was in open contradiction to the obligation of due diligence, especially considering that the reported facts referred to an offense as serious as slavery. On receiving information of the occurrence of slavery and violence against a child, the State had the obligation to take every possible measure to deal with these human rights violations. By failing to proceed in this way, it violated the State obligation to prevent the occurrence of slavery in its territory. Cf. Case of the Pueblo Bello Massacre, para. 123, and Case of Velásquez Paiz et al., para. 109. See also, ECHR, Case of Kiliç v. Turkey, No. 22492/93, Judgment of March 28, 2000, paras. 62 and 63, and ECHR, Case of Osman v. The United Kingdom, No. 23452/94, Judgment of October 28, 1998, paras. 115 and 116. 454 The detailed analysis of these proceedings will be made in the following chapter; for now, the Court notes that these initiatives were insufficient and did not lead to identifying anyone’s responsibility. 455 83