B.
The petition’s admissibility requirements
a.
Exhaustion of local remedies
21. The Commission observes that the question it must decide is whether or not the judgment
delivered by Peru’s Constitutional Court on October 21, 1997, on the amparoappeal filed by the
National Association of Discharged and Retired Staff of the Office of the Comptroller General of
the Republic was enforced.
22. The State never entered any objection regarding the requirement of exhaustion of local
remedies. The Inter-American Court has held that “the objection asserting the non-exhaustion
of domestic remedies, to be timely, must be made at an early stage of the proceedings by the
State entitled to make it, lest a waiver of the requirement be presumed.” 2 Hence, the InterAmerican Commission presumes that the State tacitly waived the requirement that local
remedies be exhausted, since it did not file an objection either within established legal time
periods or at the first opportunity it had in the proceeding to lodge its objection, which was its
response to the petition that initiated the case.
b.
Time period for presentation
23. In the petition under study, the Commission has established that the Peruvian State
waived its right to argue that domestic remedies had not been exhausted. However, the
Convention’s requirement that domestic remedies be exhausted is independent of the
requirement that the petition be lodged within six months following the judgment exhausting
domestic remedies. The Commission must therefore decide whether this petition was
submitted within a reasonable time. By virtue of the finding that the State tacitly waived the
exhaustion of domestic remedies requirement, no specific date can be identified from which to
calculate the six month period. The absence of an identifiable date does not relieve the
Petitioner of the requirement to file in a timely manner. In this sense, the Commission, taking
into account the particular circumstances of the present case, considers that the present
petition was presented within a reasonable time.
24. Based on the foregoing, the requirement as to the deadline for lodging a petition, set forth
in Article 46(1)(b) of the American Convention, does not apply in the instant case.
c.
Duplication of proceeding and res judicata
25. It is the Commission’s understanding that the subject of the petition is not pending in
another international proceeding for settlement and is not substantially the same as a petition
already examined by either the Commission or some other international organization. Hence,
the requirements set forth in Articles 46(1)(c) and 47(d) are also satisfied.
d.
Characterization of the facts
26. The Commission considers that the petition lodged by the petitioners states facts that if
true could constitute a violation of rights protected under the Convention since, as established
above, the question put to the Commission is whether the failure to enforce the judgment of
Peru’s Constitutional Court implies the Peruvian State’s violation of Articles 25, 8, 21 and 1(1)
of the American Convention.
2 IACtHR, Velázquez Rodríguez Case, Preliminary Objections, Judgment of June 26, 1987, Series C, No. 1, para. 88;
Fairén Garbi and Solis Corrales Case, Preliminary Objections, Judgment of June 26, 1987, Series C, No..2, para. 87.
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