SEPARATE OPINION OF JUDGE SERGIO GARCÍA-RAMÍREZ IN THE JUDGMENT RENDERED BY THE INTER-AMERICAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS ON MARCH 29, 2006 IN THE CASE OF SAWHOYAMAXA INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY V. PARAGUAY I. Procedural matters: effective procedures and reasonable time 1. In the case at hand, ―as in other disputes brought before the Court generating an ever wider and comprehensive case law― the problems associated with the effective protection —whether in court or out of court— of the individual rights —that is to say, from a certain standpoint— with the access to justice have become evident once again. As Mauro Cappelletti has said, the right to justice is the “most essential right”, as I recalled on March 28, 2006 in my opening speech at the 27th Special Session held in Brasilia, where the Inter-American Court tried the Case of Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous Community v. Paraguay and rendered the judgment to which I join this Opinion. 2. Certainly, rather than placing the right to justice, which belongs to all individuals, above the right to life, which is a condition preceding the existence of all the other rights, the fortunate expression by the Italian legal scholar singles out the right to justice as a requirement for the enforcement of all other rights when the be at risk, disregarded or infringed, that is to say for them to go from the aura of good propositions to the reality of existence. The right to justice is a gateway to the defense of all rights: it is a condition for the enjoyment and the exercise —a vitality requisite, if I may say so— of rights, freedoms and prerogatives. 3. The right to justice is often impaired by a myriad of obstacles. Some are linked to the very existence of legal means to claim an interest or right and enforce the corresponding obligation; others to the legal standing to get started on the way to thereto; yet some other hindrances —connected with the former— bearing on legal representation at trial; not a few others are linked to the conditions, requirements and intricacies of the procedure; and more than a few others are linked with lengthy trials —or more broadly— with the length of the proceeding aimed at enforcing the enjoyment and exercise of the right challenged, a lengthiness which may become a denial of justice. As the popular aphorism goes, “justice delayed, justice denied.” 4. Such vicissitudes, springing from many sources —not always from malice— are wont to appear with particular frequency and intensity in the path that must be trod by the individuals least provided with support and fortune, belonging to marginalized social strata, who often have little awareness of their own rights and little power to enforce them, and who are enervated by factors stemming from longstanding and persistent inequalities. The impossibility of accessing justice is precisely a typical characteristic of inequality and marginalization. This is where it appears most evidently that there is a need for the State —as the benefactor of those who could not proceed by their own means— to help overcome obstacles and inequalities, providing material and formal means for compensation to open the gateway to justice. The idea is not for the State to tilt the balance of the scale at will, but for it