of recovering them, in various cases before the Court concerning distinct States, appear to me to configure a malaise of our times, disclosing the apalling spiritual poverty of the dehumanized world in which we live. 6. The point raises in me some concerns, which I feel obliged to express in this Separate Opinion, since the link between the living and the dead - sustained by so many cultures, including the maya, - does not appear to me to have been sufficiently developed in the domain of legal science. I thus allow myself to focus my thoughts on four interrelated aspectsof the question, from the perspective of human rights, namely: a) the respect for the dead in the persons of the living; b) the unity of the human kind in the links between the living and the dead; c) the ties of solidarity between the dead and the living; and d) the prevalence of the right to truth, in respect for the dead and the living. I. Death and Law: The Respect for the Dead in the Persons of the Living. 7. In the present Bámaca Velásquez case, attention is drawn to the systematic opposition of the public power to the exhumations (par. 121(m)) and the incapacity of the State to to find the burial's place of the mortal remains of the victim, with the consequent impunity of those responsible for the violations of human rights to the detriment of Mr. Bámaca Velásquez as well as of his relatives. In a given moment of her testimony before this Court, Mrs. Jennifer Harbury pointed out that "what she seeks is justice and that the remains of Efraín Bámaca Velásquez", her husband, "are returned to her" (par. 93(b)). In fact, since immemorial times the human being has taken care to give a worthy grave to those related to him who died. 8. This is one of the oldest concerns of the human being1, rendered immortal, e.g., more than four centuries before Christ, by the well-known tragedy of Antigone of Sofocles, which pertained precisely to the firm determination of Antigone, a courageous woman, to confront the tyranny of Creon and to give a worthy grave to one of her two dead brothers (like the other brother who had been buried). The search for an understanding of death is indeed present in all cultures and philosophical traditions of the world2. This is a truly universal theme, besides being a perennial one, cultivated by the cultures of all peoples in all times3. 9. In the lucid remark by Pictet, the conflict between Creon and Antigone about the respect due to the mortal remains of the beloved person, corresponds to the eternal antagonism between the positive law (to maintain public order) and the unwritten law (to follow the individual conscience): that is, necessity versus humanity4. Why, - it may be asked, - in spite of the attention always devoted to the theme in the cultures and in all the forms of expression of the human feelings (such as literature and the arts), the whole rich contemporary thinking about the rights inherent to the human being has been concentrated almost exclusively on the 1 . As exemplified, e.g., by the Book of the Dead of the Ancient Egyptians (of 2350-2180 b.C.), also known as the Texts of the Pyramids. 2 . Cf., e.g., J.P. Carse, Muerte y Existencia - Una Historia Conceptual de la Mortalidad Humana, México, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987, pp. 17-497. 3 4 . A. Desjardins, Pour une mort sans peur, Paris, Table Ronde, 1983, p. 61. . Jean Pictet, Development and Principles of International Humanitarian Law, Dordrecht/Geneva, Nijhoff/ H. Dunant Inst., 1985, pp. 61-62.