3 8. In my understanding, the first preliminary objection of Guatemala is characterized as a preliminary objection of competence ratione temporis, interposed not as a condition of admissibility of the complaint, but rather as a condition of the process, of the application of the Court's jurisdictional activity. As such, it does not have the wide scope which the respondent Government purports to attribute to it, so as to restrict ratione temporis the very submission of the entire case to the jurisdiction of the Court. It is only meant to exclude from consideration by the Court, owing to restriction of its competence ratione temporis, those events which occurred prior to Guatemala's acceptance of the jurisdiction of the Court. There remains, however, the complaint of forced disappearance in respect of related rights, and as to the effects and actions subsequent to the deposit of its instrument of acceptance (on 9 March 1987), over which the Court retains its jurisdiction. 9. The Court recalls (paragraph 35 of the Judgment) its own characterization of the disappearance of persons, in the first cases of this kind submitted to it in the late 1980s, as a “multiple and continued violation of many rights” recognized in the American Convention; and it rightly points out (paragraph 38 of the Judgment) that the Guatemalan Penal Code in force typifies forced disappearance as a continued crime (Article 201 ter amended). Furthermore, the notion of continuing situation (situación continuada/situation continue) is also judicially recognized by the European Court of Human Rights, in decisions on cases of detention dating back to the 1960s.1 10. It should also be borne in mind that, in the instant Blake case, the Commission is not in fact seeking a decision of the Court on the violation of the right to life in particular or on the violation of the right not to be subject to arbitrary detention in particular. The Commission's complaint comprises the alleged multiple violations of human rights involved in the continuing disappearance of Mr. Nicholas Chapman Blake, taken as a whole. Hence the importance of the understanding of the present case of disappearance, bearing in mind the ineluctable interrelation between certain protected human rights as disclosed by a case of this nature. 11. As a final thought, may I point out that cases of disappearance, such as the present one, encompass, among related rights, non-derogable fundamental rights, and this, in my understanding, places the interdiction of that crime in the domain of jus cogens, of the peremptory norms of general international law. It is not surprising that the 1994 InterAmerican Convention on Forced Disappearance of Persons prohibits (Article X) the invocation of any justification for that crime, even in exceptional circumstances (e.g., state or threat of war, or any public emergencies). 12. I say this because, in my view, the emphasis of this Judgment of the Court on preliminary objections should have been placed, not on the sword of Damocles of 9 March 1987, date on which Guatemala accepted the jurisdiction of the Court (which must be accepted as a limitation ratione temporis of its jurisdiction, given the present stage of 1 Moreover, the practice of the Human Rights Committee, under the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its first Optional Protocol, as from the early eighties, contains examples of the consideration of continuing situations generating events that occurred or persisted after the date of entry into force of the Covenant and Protocol with regard to the State at issue, and which constituted per se violations of the rights enshrined in the Covenant.