8 procedures of other human rights treaties which require the condition of "victim" for the exercise of the right of individual petition (cf. supra). 23. Each of those procedures, despite differences in their legal nature, has contributed, in its own way, to the gradual strengthening of the procedural capacity of the complainant at international level. In an express recognition of the relevance of the right of individual petition, the Declaration and Programme of Action of Vienna, the main document adopted by the II World Conference on Human Rights (1993), urged its adoption, as an additional method of protection, by means of Optional Protocols to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and to the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights24. That document recomended, moreover, to the States Parties in human rights treaties, the acceptance of all the available optional procedures of individual petitions or communications25. II. The Right of Individual Petition under the American Convention on Human Rights. 24. In the inter-American system of protection of human rights, the right of individual petition has constituted an effective way of facing not only individual cases but also massive and systematic violations of human rights26, even before the entry into force of the American Convention on Human Rights (i.e., in the initial practice of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights). Its importance has been fundamental, and could never be minimized. The consolidation of the right of individual petition under Article 44 of the American Convention on Human Rights was endowed with special significance. Not only was its importance, for the mechanism of the Convention as a whole, duly emphasized in the travaux préparatoires of that provision of the Convention27, as it also represented an advance in relation to what, until the adoption of the Pact of San José in 1969, had been achieved in that respect, in the ambit of the International Law of Human Rights. 25. The other regional Convention then in force, the European Convention, only accepted the right of individual petition originally enshrined in an optional clause (Article 25 of the Convention), conditioning the legitimatio ad causam to the demonstration of the condition of victim by the individual complainant, - what, in its turn, generated a remarkable jurisprudential development of the notion of "victim" under the European Convention (supra). The American Convention, in a distinct way, rendered the right of individual petition (Article 44 of the Convention) mandatory, of 23. Declaration and Programme of Action of Vienna of 1993, part II, pars. 40 and 75, respectively. - The elaboration of both Draft Protocols is virtually concluded, in their essential features, now waiting for the approval on the part of the States. 24. Declaration and Programme of Action of Vienna of 1993, part II, par. 90. 25. I thus regret not to be able to share the insinuation present in part of the contemporary European specialized bibliography on the matter, in the sense that the right of individual petition would perhaps not be effective in relation to massive and systematic violations of human rights. The experience accumulated from this side of the Atlantic, in the inter-American system of protection, points exactly to the opposite sense, and thanks to the right of individual petition many lives were saved and justice was accomplished in concrete cases amidst generalized situations of violations of human rights. 26. Cf. OAS, Conferencia Especializada Interamericana sobre Derechos Humanos - Actas y Documentos (San José of Costa Rica, 07-22 November 1969), doc. OAS/Ser.K/XVI/1.2, Washington D.C., General Secretariat of the OAS, 1978, pp. 43, 47 and 373.