24. The Commission is competent ratione loci to consider the petition inasmuch as it alleges violations of rights protected by the American Convention which are said to have taken place within the territory of a state party to said treaty. 25. The Commission is also competent ratione temporis because the obligation to observe and ensure the rights protected in the American Convention was already binding upon the State at the time the events alleged in the petition occurred. 26. Finally, the Commission has ratione materiae competence because the petition alleges violations of human rights protected in the American Convention. B. Other admissibility requirements 1. Exhaustion of domestic remedies 27. Article 46(1)(a) of the American Convention provides that admission of petitions lodged with the Commission shall be subject to the requirement that the remedies under domestic law have been pursued and exhausted in accordance with generally recognized principles of international law. In its preamble, the American Convention states that the international protection offered by said instrument in the form of a convention reinforces or complements the protection provided by the domestic law of the states. In that sense, the rule of prior exhaustion of domestic remedies allows the State to resolve the problem under its internal law before being confronted with an international proceeding. This is particularly true in the international jurisdiction of human rights. 28. The rule of prior exhaustion of domestic remedies set down in Article 46 of the American Convention refers to the judicial remedies that are available, suitable and able to provide an effective solution for the alleged violation of human rights. The Inter-American Court has ruled that when, for de facto or de jure reasons, domestic remedies are not available to petitioners then they are freed from the obligation to exhaust them.8 If the domestic remedy is designed in such a way that its exercise is in effect beyond the reach of the alleged victim then there is certainly no obligation to exhaust it in order resolve the legal situation. 29. With respect to the action for unconstitutionality, Article 277 of the Ecuadorian Constitution specifically determines which persons have standing to bring such an action along with the requirements in order to do so. The Inter-American Commission finds excessive the requirements of collecting the signatures of 1,000 citizens or securing a favorable opinion from the Ombudsman. At the time of the events, there were no regulations in place on the proceeding before the Ombudsman, and therefore there was no specific procedure or time limits. In addition, the State has also failed to provide information about the action for unconstitutionality in other individual petitions. Accordingly it has not furnished any information to support its suitability and effectiveness for disposing of the instant matter in the domestic jurisdiction. Furthermore, the IACHR takes as reasonable and uncontested the petitioners’ argument regarding the ineffectiveness that any action brought before the Constitutional Tribunal would have had in practice, since said organ had already adopted a decision setting out its position on the inadmissibility of actions against the congressional resolution under which Hugo Quintana Coello and the other justices had been terminated. In sum, the action for unconstitutionality was not a domestic remedy that the petitioners had to exhaust before they could seek the intervention of the Inter-American Commission. Alfredo Contreras Villavicencio, Arturo Donoso Castellón, Galo Galarza Paz, Luis Heredia Moreno, Estuardo Hurtado Larrea, Ángel Lescano Fiallo, Milton Moreno Aguirre, Galo Pico Mantilla, Hernán Quevedo Terán, Jorge Ramírez Álvarez, Carlos Riofrío Corral, Clotario Salinas Montaño, Armando Serrano Puig, José Vicente Troya Jaramillo, Rodrigo Varea Avilez, Jaime Velasco Dávila, Miguel Villacís Gómez and Gonzalo Zambrano Palacios. 8 I/A Court H.R., Exceptions to the Exhaustion of Domestic Remedies (Article 46(1), 46(2)(a) and 46(2)(b) of the American Convention on Human Rights), Advisory Opinion OC-11/90 of August 10, 1990, par. 17. 7