- 16case. The notion of continued situation, which constitutes normative progress in international human rights law concerning protection against grave human rights violations, was used here not to expand the protective jurisdiction to the origin of such violations but, the reverse, to remove the respondent State from this jurisdiction until the present, thus depriving the Court – by acceding to this merely formalistic interpretation – of exercising its treaty-based obligation to protect. 56. The notion of continued situation, which supports a procedural advance in international human rights law by contributing to the effectiveness of the right of international individual petition, was degraded in this case, because it was used to render this right of petition illusory. Consequently, in this case it was precisely the fundamental clauses (cláusulas pétreas) – as I have always called them within this Court44 – that were removed from the international protection of the American Convention; namely, those relating to the right to individual international petition and to the acceptance of the Court’s jurisdiction on contentious matters. In international human rights law, the notion of continued situation was conceived to protect individual victims and not the respondent State, as had surrealistically occurred in this case. 57. It was precisely to avoid difficulties such as the one that arose in this case, and that could arise again in future cases that, in the draft protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights, to strengthen its protection mechanism (2001) – which I prepared after having been appointed to do so by my colleagues, the judges of the Court – I proposed an amendment to Article 62 of the American Convention in order to make the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court automatically compulsory (for all the States Parties to the Convention and without any interpretative declarations or restrictions), among several other matters.45 I recalled this proposal in my separate opinions (para. 39) in Hilaire, Constantine and Benjamin et al. v. Trinidad and Tobago (judgments on preliminary objections of September 1, 2001), and I repeat it with even greater emphasis in this dissenting opinion. 58. My position on this matter is firmly anti-“realist.” When I presented this draft protocol in my successive reports to the to the General Assembly, Permanent Council, and Committee on Juridical and Political Affairs of the Organization of American States (OAS) in 2001, 2002 and 2003, I remember that no formal objection was made to it; nevertheless, nothing has been done in this regard to date. Perhaps my proposals were also dispersed by the winds of the implacable and cruel passage of time. Fortunately, at the time my reports to the OAS were always very well received by the delegations of the Member States. Nevertheless, at times I detected a look of surprise from a few delegates (as if they had just heard a proposal from a visitor from outer space), although they were always very attentive and polite to me. 59. These few ill-dissimulated looks of surprise caused me a mixture of dismay and sorrow. Indeed, it is difficult to escape the impression that, throughout the history of law, it has been the “realists,” in the same way as the positivists, who have least 44 A.A. Cançado Trindade, "Las Cláusulas Pétreas de la Protección Internacional del Ser Humano: El Acceso Directo a la Justicia Internacional y la Intangibilidad de la Jurisdicción Obligatoria de los Tribunales Internacionales de Derechos Humanos", in El Sistema Interamericano de Protección de los Derechos Humanos en el Umbral del Siglo XXI - Memoria del Seminario (Noviembre de 1999), vol. I, 2a. ed., San José, Costa Rica, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 2003, pp. 3-68. 45 Cf. A.A. Cançado Trindade, Informe: Bases para un Proyecto de Protocolo a la Convención Americana de Derechos Humanos, para Fortalecer Su Mecanismo de Protección, tome II, 2a. ed., San José, Costa Rica, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, 2003, pp. 1-64.