contribute to securing a full and dignified life. Violations of such rights may in certain circumstances therefore also entail violations of the right to life. General Comment No. 3, Paras. 41-43. In the Americas, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) has also taken a broad interpretation of the right to life. For example, in the cases of the Yakya Axa and Sawhoyamaxa indigenous communities in Paraguay, the IACtHR analyzed threats to both communities’ living conditions in connection with alleged violations of the right to life. The community members were dispossessed of their traditional territories and lived in degraded conditions alongside a highway. As articulated by the IACtHR, the life of the community members was “characterized by unemployment, illiteracy, morbidity rates caused by evitable illnesses, malnutrition, precarious conditions in their dwelling places and environment, limitations to access and use health services and drinking water, as well as marginalization due to economic, geographic and cultural causes.” Case of the Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous Community v. Paraguay, Judgment of March 29, 2006 (Merits, Reparations and Costs), Para. 168 (available at http://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_146_ing.pdf). The IACtHR asserted that the right to life “includes not only the right of every human being not to be arbitrarily deprived of his life, but also the right that conditions that impede or obstruct access to a decent existence should not be generated.” Case of the Yakye Axa Indigenous Community v. Paraguay, Judgment of June 17, 2005 (Merits, Reparations and Costs), Para. 161 (available at http://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_125_ing.pdf). The IACtHR stated: One of the obligations that the State must inescapably undertake as guarantor, to protect and ensure the right to life, is that of generating minimum living conditions that are compatible with the dignity of the human person and of not creating conditions that hinder or impede it. In this regard, the State has the duty to take positive, concrete measures geared toward fulfillment of the right to a decent life, especially in the case of persons who are vulnerable and at risk, whose care becomes a high priority. Id. at para. 162 (internal footnote omitted). As part of its analysis of the right to life, the IACtHR went further and specifically addressed the impacts that the rights to health, food and access to clean water have on the right to “a decent existence” in the following manner: Special detriment to the right to health, and closely tied to this, detriment to the right to food and access to clean water, have a major impact on the right to a decent existence and basic conditions to exercise other human rights, such as the right to education or the right to cultural identity. 12