DIN0439 - Dispute Settlement (2016)

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.