3 established a violation of Article 7(5) and then, in the chapter dealing with Article 2, it concluded that: 99. In conclusion, the Court points out that the exception contained in the aforementioned Article 114 bis violates Article 2 of the Convention in that Ecuador has not taken adequate measures under its domestic law to give effect to the right enshrined in Article 7(5) of the Convention.13 Thus, the Court linked the failure to comply with Article 2 to the violation of a specific right. 5. This linkage between the obligation of Article 1(1) and the substantive right that is protected makes it unlikely that an autonomous violation of that right can be declared. If the State is obliged to guarantee the rights established in the Convention – as Article 1(1) states – the object of the guarantee can only be one or more of those rights, and it shall be understood that the obligation has not been complied with only with regard to that right, and constitutes a violation of the latter. Consequently, I consider that the legal grounds that the Court can invoke to demand that a State comply with the obligation in Article 1(1) are the existence of a violation of a right that should be protected, ensured or guaranteed. In other words, there appear to be no other legal grounds for obliging a State to investigate facts, other than the Court deciding that by failing to conduct an investigation, the obligation to guarantee a specific right has been violated. Furthermore, I do not consider that the Court has the authority to demand that a State investigate any fact, without basing this demand on legal grounds arising from the Convention or on the international norms which the Court can invoke to justify its decisions. Indeed, there appears to be no mention in the Court’s case law of legal grounds other than the one described above. 6. Looking at another aspect of the problem, the case law of the Court, with which I agree, also seems to indicate that a right recognized in the Convention may be violated by either the act or the omission of the State. This had already been stated by the Court in the Velásquez Rodríguez judgment on the merits, and is defined specifically in the Children’s Rehabilitation Center judgment. In paragraph 156 of this judgment, the Court holds that States “have the obligation to guarantee the creation of the conditions required for the full enjoyment and exercise” of the right to life, and then establishes that, since Paraguay had not taken “the necessary and sufficient positive measures to guarantee conditions for a dignified life for all the detainees or taken the special measures required for the children,” the State had violated Article 4.14 With regard to this specific case: 1. The first point that the Court had to decide in this case referred to its competence ratione temporis to hear it, since the massacre of many members of the Moiwana Community had occurred in 1986 - namely, before the date that the American Convention came into force in Suriname and also before the date that this State accepted the Court’s 13 14 Cf. Case of Suárez-Rosero. Judgment of November 12, 1997. Series C No. 35, para. 99. Cf. Case of the “Children’s Rehabilitation Institute”. Judgment of September 2, 2004. Series C No. 112, para. 176. See also fourth operative paragraph of the judgment.