8 III JURISDICTION 16. The Inter-American Court has jurisdiction to hear this case, pursuant to Article 62(3) of the American Convention, because Bolivia has been a State Party to the Convention since July 19, 1979, and accepted the contentious jurisdiction of the Court on July 27, 1993. IV PRELIMINARY OBJECTIONS 17. The State submitted the following arguments in its answering brief as preliminary objections: the lack of jurisdiction ratione loci and the presumed failure to exhaust domestic remedies. The State indicated the failure to exhaust two remedies in Bolivia’s domestic jurisdiction that, it argued, could have been filed against Ruling No. 514/2006 of August 23, 2006, which confirmed the decision declaring the extinction of the criminal proceedings against the doctor who had performed the tubal ligation (infra para. 112): the cassation procedure and the application for constitutional amparo (protection). The Court will now decide on the objections filed. A. Objection concerning the alleged lack of jurisdiction ratione loci A.1 Arguments of the State and observations of the Commission and the representative 18. The State filed the preliminary objection of the Court’s lack of jurisdiction ratione loci based on Article 46(1)(a) of the Convention in relation to the violation of the right not to be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, recognized in Article 5(2) of the Convention, because this had not occurred in the territory of Bolivia. The State argued that “I.V. claimed, disregarding the lack of connection between the facts, to attribute to the Bolivian State responsibility for acts and consequences that occurred in another country, thus contravening an elementary rule of liability, which is that the entity responsible is the one that, based on the evidence, has any degree of responsibility.” In this regard, the State asserted that, “[…] regarding the supposed consequences of torture, I.V. has not been able to prove responsibility, which is an argument that is pertinent, appropriate and evidently sufficient for the Court to declare the admissibility of the objection concerning its lack of jurisdiction, because Bolivia is not responsible for any act of torture.” Lastly, the State indicated that “the trauma or consequences that affect I.V. […], were not the result of the procedure, but of acts of torture which she alleges that she suffered in Peru, a situation for which, the Bolivian State bears no responsibility.” The State therefore asked the Court to “declare that it did not have jurisdiction to examine the supposed violations alleged by the representatives, which were the result of acts that took place outside Bolivian territory.” In its final arguments, the State reaffirmed that the Court should refrain from declaring Bolivia responsible “for any act or any harm that was produced as a result of acts that took place in a foreign territory.” 19. The Commission clarified that this preliminary objection was not related to the contents of the Merits Report, but was limited exclusively to references made in the brief with motions, pleadings and evidence by the presumed victim’s representative. However, according to the Commission, those references “seek to provide information on other human rights violations suffered by I.V. before her forced sterilization, as background information and not for the purpose of deriving legal consequences with regard to the international responsibility of the State of Bolivia for acts that took place under the jurisdiction of another State and that are not part of these international proceedings.” The Commission considered appropriate that the Court take note of this background information, “only insofar as it is pertinent for a better understanding of the [presumed] victim, her circumstances, and the effects of what did happen under the jurisdiction of the State of Bolivia as a foreigner with numerous factors that contributed to her vulnerability before, during and after the facts described in the Merits Report.”