for in sections (a) and (c) of Article 46.2 of the American Convention are applicable. At the time of the incident, they say, the forced displacement of persons had not been defined as a crime, and as a result of that the victims had no available judicial remedy; and that given the length of time that has passed since Operation Genesis, during which those responsible for the forced displacement of the residents of the Cacarica basin and the murder of Marino López have been neither prosecuted nor punished, they maintain there has been an unwarranted delay on the part of the domestic courts. B. State 23. The State holds that Operation Genesis was a military operation carried out under a legally issued operational order from the Commander of Brigade XVII as the competent authority and that it sought the legitimate goal of pursuing groups guilty of criminal acts in the region and of liberating ten Marines kidnapped by guerrillas in Juradó. It says the operation was carried out in accordance with legal guidelines and with respect toward the civilian population and that, according to official information, it resulted in no civilian deaths or injuries. It adds that the displacement of the population was not caused by Operation Genesis, but had been ongoing since some days earlier as a result of the criminal activities of illegal armed groups with guerrilla ties. 24. The State presents a series of arguments in which it claims the Commission does not have the necessary competence to examine some of the claims made by the petitioners, and that in general terms the petition is inadmissible because domestic remedies have not been exhausted and because of the nature of the alleged facts in light of the fourth-instance doctrine. 25. First of all, the State argues what it refers to as the IACHR’s lack of competence ratione personae10 for ruling on the effects of the alleged violations with respect to all the affected persons. The State holds that the only person fully identified in the petition is Mr. Marino López and that the residents of the Río Cacarica basin towns (Puente América, Bijao–Cacarica, Quebrada del Medio, Bogotá, Barranquilla, El Limón–Peranchito, Santa Lucía, Las Pajas, Quebrada Bonita, La Virginia, Villa Hermosa–La Raya, San Higinio, Puerto Berlín, Puerto Nuevo, Montañita Cirilo, Bocachica, Balsagira, San José de la Balsa, La Balsa, Bendito Bocachico, Varsovia, Tequerré Medio) allegedly affected by the reported incident are not identified by name and so therefore should not be considered victims by the IACHR. To support this stance, it states that Article 44 of the Convention, which establishes the right of standing for appearances before the inter-American system, requires the “full and complete” individual identification of the victims, since the aim of the system is protection in individual cases and not in general or abstract situations.11 26. Secondly, the State argues what it calls the IACHR’s lack of competenceratione materiae. It holds that the Commission is not competent to rule the State responsible for violations of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, the International Convention against Torture, or the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the 10 Note that in the final section of “Petitions” in its submission of April 18, 2006, and in the entirety of its submission of June 8, 2006, the State changed the name of its argument regarding the individuals who should or should not be considered victims in the petitioners’ claim from “absence of ratione personaejurisdiction” to “absence of ratione temporis jurisdiction.” 11 The State says that “the jurisprudential trend of favoring the procedural authority of locus standi in judicio of the victims, their relatives, or their representatives, heightens this demand, in light of the recognition of the individual as the bearer of the rights enshrined in the Convention and, consequently, as the beneficiary of the protection and compensation offered by the System.” It further states that “this situation means that the object of the protection is individual cases or specific victims with respect to which the scope of the alleged violations can be established, and not general or abstract situations in which it is not possible to establish the individually considered subject or subjects that make up the group of persons who have allegedly suffered a violation of their rights.” The purpose, it says, is to prevent the deformation of the individual petitions procedure in the inter-American human rights protection system as a means for establishing whether or not the rights of individual persons have been violated. The State cites the following precedents to support its position: Report No. 4/01 (María Eugenia Morales de Sierra), Annual Report of the IACHR 2000, paragraph 31; Report No. 51/02 (Janet Espinoza Feria et al.), Annual Report of the IACHR 2002, paragraph 35; and Case of the “Juvenile Reeducation Institute,” Judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights of September 2, 2004, Series C No. 112, paragraphs 107 to 109. Note DDH. GOI/18083/0836 from the Directorate of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law at the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dated April 18, 2006, pp. 2-6. 5