Inter-American System Information

1. Description of the Inter-American System

The American States, in exercise of their sovereignty and within the framework of the Organization of American States (OAS), adopted a series of international instruments that have become the grounds for a regional system for the promotion and protection of human rights, known as the Inter-American Human Rights System (Inter-American System or IAHRS). This system acknowledges and defines these rights and establishes obligations tending to their promotion and protection and creates bodies destined to supervise their observance.

The Inter-American system was formally initiated with the approval of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man in 1948, within the framework of the Charter of the Organization of American States. Additionally, the system has other instruments such as the American Convention on Human Rights (American Convention or Convention); Protocols and Conventions on specialized matters, such as the Convention to prevent and punish Torture, the Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons, and the Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women, among others; as well as the Rules of Procedure and Statutes of its bodies. All these instruments are available for consultation at the following link:Instruments

The IAHRS is made up of two bodies: the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, Commission, or Inter-American Commission), whose headquarters are located in Washington, D.C, United States of America, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Court, Inter-American Court, or Tribunal), whose headquarters are in San José, Costa Rica..

The Member States of the OAS are: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vicente and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, United States of America, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

The States that have ratified the American Convention are: Argentina, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

The States that have acknowledged the Court’s jurisdiction are: Argentina, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

2. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

The Inter-American Commission was created in the III Resolution of the Fifth Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs held in Santiago, Chile in 1959, in order to correct the lack of bodies specifically in charge of supervising the observance of human rights in the system. According to Article 112 of the Charter of the Organization of American States, the Commission’s main function is to “promote the observance and defense of human rights and serve as a body of consultation for the organization in this field.”

It has seven members that are proposed by the State and elected, in a personal capacity, by the General Assembly of the OAS. The members of the Commission do not represent their countries but instead the thirty-five Member states of the OAS.

The functions and powers of the IACHR are defined in its Statute: in Article 18 regarding the Member States of the OAS, in Article 19 regarding the state parties to the Convention, and in Article 20 in what refers to the Member States that are not part of the Convention.

Based on that established in these Articles, it can be said that the Commission has, on one hand, competences with political dimensions, among which tasks include the in loco visits and the preparation of reports of the observations on the human rights situation in the Member States.

On the other hand, the IACHR carries out duties with a quasi-judicial dimension. It is within this competence of the IACHR that it receives the complaints of individuals or organizations regarding human rights violations, it examines these petitions and it hands down the cases in the supposition that they comply with the admissibility requirements established in Article 46 of the Convention. In this sense, once the petition is presented before the Commission, and the formal admissibility requirements have been examined, it is forwarded to the accused State so it may present its observations. Thus, a proceeding is started before the Commission (regulated in Article 48 of the Convention), in which “it shall place itself at the disposal of the parties concerned with a view to reaching a friendly settlement of the matter on the basis of respect for the human rights recognized in [the] Convention.” (Article 48(1)(f)) If a solution is not reached, the Commission may forward the case to the Court by filing an application (Article 32 of the Rules of Procedure of the Court)

Based on all the aforementioned, if an individual or an organization wishes to present before the Inter-American System a situation of potential human rights violation, it shall do so before the Inter-American Commission and not before the Court, see How to file a complaint before the Inter-American System?.

3. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights

The Inter-American Court is one of three regional Courts for the protection of Human Rights, along with the European Court of Human Rights and the African Court of Human Rights and Peoples’ Rights.

In the Ninth International Conference of American States, held in Bogotá, Colombia in 1948, the resolution titled “Inter-American Court for the Protection of the Rights of Man” was adopted, which considered that the protection of these rights “shall be guaranteed by a juridical body, since there is no duly guaranteed right without the protection of a competent court.”

The Court was created by the American Convention on Human Rights, adopted in the Inter-American Specialized Conference on Human Rights, gathered in San José, Costa Rica, on November 22, 1969. The Convention went into force on July 1978 and the Court started its operations in 1979.

The Court hosts 7 national judges from Member States of the OAS elected, in a personal capacity and upon nomination of the States Parties to the American Convention, by the General Assembly of the OAS. The judges of the Court do not represent the interests of the States that nominate them as candidates.

Up to this date, twenty-one State Parties have acknowledged the Court’s contentious jurisdiction: Costa Rica, Peru, Venezuela, Honduras, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala, Suriname, Panama, Chile, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Bolivia, El Salvador, Haiti, Brazil, Mexico, Dominican Republic, and Barbados.

The Court has essentially two functions, an adjudicatory one and an advisory one, to which we can add the power to adopt provisional measures.

Regarding the adjudicatory function, it is the mechanism through which the Court determines if a State has incurred in international responsibility for having violated any of the rights enshrined or stipulated in the American Convention on Human Rights. It must be pointed out that, pursuant with Article 61(1) of the Convention, only the State Parties and the Commission have the right to submit a case to the Court.

The cases before the Court are started by an application presented either by the Commission or by a State.

The Court’s verdicts are final and not subject to appeal, but there is a possibility that, within the ninety days following the notification of the verdict, and in the event of disagreement regarding the sense or scope of the same, the Court can issue an interpretation of the verdict upon request of any of the parties.

Within the obligation of the Court to periodically inform the General Assembly of the OAS is the power to monitor compliance with its verdicts. This task is performed through the revision of periodic reports forwarded by the State and objected by the victims and the Commission. During the year 2007, the Court started a new practice of holding hearings for the monitoring of compliance of the verdicts issued by the Court.

Regarding the advisory function, it is the means through which the Court responds to consultations made by the Member States of the OAS or its bodies. This advisory competence strengthens the capacity of the Organization to solve matters that arise from the application of the Convention, since it allows the bodies of the OAS to consult the Court in what corresponds to them.

Finally, the Court may adopt the provisional measures considered necessary in cases of extreme gravity and urgency and when necessary in order to avoid irreparable damages to people, both in cases being processed before the Court and in matters that have not yet been submitted to it, upon request of the Inter-American Commission.

From the aforementioned, we can conclude that the Inter-American Court, as indicated, is not competent to respond to the petitions presented by individuals or organizations, since they shall be filed before the Commission, which is the body in charge of receiving and evaluating the complaints presented by individuals based on violations to human rights by any of the State Parties.