The facts of the case relate to the failure to comply with the judgments of the Constitutional Court of Peru, which ordered the Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic to pay the members of the Association of Discharged and Retired Employees of the Comptroller, the salaries and wages, benefits and bonuses received by the active employees of that office performing functions identical, similar, or equivalent to those that the discharged or retired employees had performed.

The IA Court highlighted that the guarantee of an effective judicial remedy is not merely satisfied by its formal existence, but that it is required to guarantee the means to carry out the final decisions of the competent authority. In regard to the breach of the right to property, the IA Court reiterated the criteria that if a pensioner pays his contributions into a pension fund and terminates his service in order to qualify for the pension scheme in accordance with the law, he acquires the right for his pension to be governed by the terms and conditions established in said law. Therefore, the right to a pension has “property consequences” which are protected by the American Convention.

The IA Court also referred to the violation of the State’s obligation relating to the progressive development of economic, social and cultural rights, and established that this obligation also consists of the adoption of measures, in particular economic and technical, in order to progressively achieve the full realization of these rights. Notwithstanding, the IA Court considered that there was not an infringement of said obligation in the case under analysis.