5 a. The court asserted jurisdiction to consider the instant case as of July 2, 1999, the date on which the Commission filed the application. Peru’s purported “withdrawal” of its recognition of the Court’s contentious jurisdiction on July 9, 1999, and its return of the application and its attachments on July 16, 1999, have no effect whatsoever on the Court’s exercise of jurisdiction in the instant case; and b. A unilateral action by a State cannot divest an international court of jurisdiction that it has already asserted; the American Convention contains no provision that would make it possible to withdraw recognition of the Court’s contentious jurisdiction, as such a provision would be antithetical to the Convention and have no foundation in law. Even supposing a State could withdraw its recognition of the Court’s contentious jurisdiction, formal notification would have to be given one year before the withdrawal could take effect, for the sake of legal certainty and continuity. Finally, the Commission petitioned the Court to find that Peru’s return of the application in the Constitutional Court case and its attachments had no legal effects and to continue to exercise jurisdiction over the instant case. 21. On September 24, 1999, the Court delivered judgment on its competence, and resolved, unanimously: 1. To declare that: a. present case; The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is competent to take up the b. The State’s purported withdrawal of the declaration recognizing the contentious jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights is inadmissible. 2. To continue to examine and adjudicate the instant case. 3. To commission its President, at the appropriate time, to convene the State and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to a public hearing on the merits of the case, to be held at the seat of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. 4. To notify Peru and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. 22. On September 27 and 29 and October 4, 1999, the State forwarded notes in which it expressed its position with regard to the judgment on competence delivered by the Court. On September 27, 1999, the First Secretary (Ministro) of Peru’s Embassy in Costa Rica came to the seat of the Court to return the judgment on competence. He also delivered a note to the Secretariat dated September 29, 1999, which stated: 1. The ‘judgments on competence’ delivered by the Court and notified on September 27, 1999, are not established procedurally in any of the instruments in force in the inter-American system for the protection of human rights. 2. By Note [... RE (GAB) Nº 6/24 of July 15, 1999,] the State of Peru returned the notifications [in the Constitutional Court case] and informed the Court that it had deposited before the General Secretariat of the Organization of American States (OAS), the instrument wherein it communicated the decision of the Government and Congress to withdraw recognition of the contentious jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.