47 disappearance, the death of the victims has always been present since the beginning of the jurisprudence of this Court, in which the violation of the right to life was declared, among other reasons, because such death was presumed, and the existence of more or less evidence of such death did not modify the classification as forced disappearance. It explained that the act as disappearance is characterized precisely by what State agents do after killing the victim - that is, taking measures aimed at erasing any traces of the bodies to prevent their identification or their fate and whereabouts from being established. 171 d) By its very nature, the forced disappearance of persons seeks the legal annulment of the individual in order to deprive him or her from the protection afforded by the law and justice. In this way, the repressive apparatus guarantees that people can be deprived of their rights with impunity, placing them beyond the reach of any possible judicial protection. 151. The Commission also argued that the community of Santa Bárbara was regarded as a “red zone” by the Army, because it had allegedly detected the presence of subversive groups who were making incursions into mines and nearby villages, and that the detention of Ramón Hilario Morán and Francisco Hilario Torres and their relatives was carried out because they were perceived to be members or relatives of members of subversive groups. In this sense, the forced disappearance of the victims in the case, including the seven children, was intended to punish the two families, as well as to intimidate the rest of the community and the local population in general. Therefore, the State had failed in its obligation to protect the family, recognized in Article 17 of the Convention, to the detriment of the fifteen victims and their next of kin, as well as its obligations to provide the seven missing children with the necessary guarantees and protection derived from their special condition of vulnerability, established in Article 19 of the Convention. 172 In addition, it noted that, according to the proven facts, the child P.C.M., an alleged deserter from Sendero Luminoso, acted as a guide for Operation “Apolonia” despite the prohibition of the recruitment of children into the armed forces or other armed groups and their use in hostilities, in contravention of the international corpus juris on the protection of the rights of children and adolescents. 152. The representatives substantially agreed with the Commission’s arguments and, in addition, asked the Court to determine the State’s aggravated responsibility in two aspects: i) because all the violations committed in this case occurred in the context of a military strategy created and executed by the State and ii) due to the serious lack of protection provided to children. They also alleged that the State is responsible for a breach of the duty to provide guarantees owing to the lack of an effective investigation of the facts to the detriment of the disappeared victims, given the State’s interference “aimed at preventing a serious and effective investigation of the forced disappearance of the victims.” 153. The representatives alleged that, in this case, the military made no distinction in their treatment of the child victims, flagrantly violating the duty of special protection owed to them. Likewise, the facts of the case were part of a generalized context of violence against children, both nationally and in the region of Huancavelica. They also pointed out that the State concealed the fact that the victims were minors in official documents, that is, their death certificates showed false ages. Consequently, they asked the Court to declare the State responsible for the violation of the obligation to adopt special protection measures for children in the context of the internal 171 In this regard, the Inter-American Commission referred in detail to the cases of Rodríguez Vera et al. (Palace of Justice) v. Colombia, Durand and Ugarte v. Peru, 19 Merchants v. Colombia, Mapiripán Massacre v. Colombia and Ibsen Cárdenas and Ibsen Peña v. Bolivia. 172 The Commission referred to various provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions, Article 13 of the Additional Protocol II to these and to resolutions of the United Nations Security Council that would be applicable to the situation of the child victims in the present case.