Inter-American System Information
Informative text over the Inter-American System, presentation of petitions, consultations to the Court and visits to the Court’s Headquarters. Original text can be found here.
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?.