SEPARATE OPINION OF JUDGE VENTURA-ROBLES 1. I have concurred with great satisfaction with my vote to the unanimous adoption of the instant Judgment in the Case of the Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous Community v. Paraguay, because it meant a substantial shift in the criteria of the majority of the Court who, in an identical case, i.e. Case of the Indigenous Community Yakye Axa v. Paraguay, did not find that Article 4(1) of the Convention had been violated to the detriment of the members of said community who died as a result of the living conditions to which they were subjected, something they indeed have done in the instant case, for Article 4(1) (Right to Life), in relation to Article 1(1) (Obligation to Respect Rights) and Article 19 (Rights of the Child), all of them of the American Convention on Human Rights, have been found to have been violated to the detriment of the demised victims. 2. This change in the criterion of the Court is meaningful, for these two cases are identical. The only difference between the Case of the Yakye Axa Community and the Sawhoyamaxa Community is the name of the victims, since all other aspects are the same. Two indigenous communities, the Yakye Axa and the Sawhoyamaxa, which demand from the same Paraguayan State the return of their ancestral lands; both indigenous communities evolved from a common ancestry: the Chanawatsan; both communities are located along the road from Pozo Colorado to Concepción, in the ”Presidente Hayes” Department; both communities were declared in state of emergency by means of Executive Order No. 3789/99 of June 23, 1999 as a result of the precarious living conditions these communities were enduring, and still are enduring, which have resulted in, among other things, the loss of human lives, especially among children. 3. The lack of acknowledgment of the strict liability of the State as sufficient grounds to find the State responsible for the death of human beings in the Case of the Indigenous Community Yakye Axa v. Paraguay on the part of the majority of the judges of the Inter-American Court, prompted Judge Cançado Trindade and myself to give a joint dissenting opinion holding the State liable for the violation of Article 4(1) of the American Convention. Judge Abreu-Burelli followed suit with his dissenting opinion. 4. In that case, the majority of the Court judges did not find a causal connection on the basis of which the death of ten members, mostly children, of the Indigenous Community Yakye Axa could be attributed to the Paraguayan State, when the only causal connection to be found was the one with the poor living conditions attributable to the State by having failed to quickly resolve the claim of the Yakye Axa Community regarding their ancestral land and to efficiently address the problem of supplying water, food, and medicine to said Community, pursuant to the provisions of Executive Order No. 3789, which had declared it to be in a state of emergency. 5. In said case, the burden of proof should have been shifted to the State, for it to prove that it was not responsible for the death of those persons, establishing another causal connection with other specific causes that could have relieved the State of all liability.