2
truly fundamental obligation, ensues from Article 1(1) of the Convention; to deny
its comprehensive scope would be to deprive the American Convention of its
effects. The general obligation of Article 1(1) embraces all the rights protected by
the Convention. There is nothing to prevent the matter from being considered at
the phase of reparations, inasmuch as these latter are demanded for the failure to
comply with both the specific obligations pertaining to each of the protected rights,
as well as the additional general obligations of respecting and ensuring respect for
those rights (Article 1(1)) and of bringing domestic law into conformity with the
norms of protection of the Convention to that effect.
5.
It could hardly be denied that, at times, the reparation itself for proven
human rights violations in concrete cases may require changes in domestic laws
and administrative practices. Enforcement of human rights treaties has not only
been known to resolve individual cases, it has also brought about such changes,
thus transcending the particular circumstances of the concrete cases; examples of
cases in which national laws were in fact modified, in accordance with the decisions
of the international human rights supervisory organs in individual cases, abound in
international practice.2 The efficacy of human rights treaties is measured, to a
large extent, by their impact upon the domestic law of the States Parties. It cannot
be legitimately expected that a human rights treaty be "adapted" to the conditions
prevailing within each country, as, a contrario sensu, it ought to have the effect of
improving the conditions of exercise of the rights it protects in the ambit of the
domestic law of the States Parties.
6.
It is indeed surprising, and regrettable, that, at the end of five decades of
evolution of the International Law of Human Rights, doctrine has not yet sufficiently
and satisfactorily examined and developed the extent and consequences of the
interrelations between the general duties to respect and to ensure respect for the
protected rights and to harmonize the domestic legal order with the international
norms of protection. The few existing indications are to be found in case-law. This
Court began to consider such interrelations in its seventh Advisory Opinion, of
1986, in which it warned that the fact that States Parties "may fix the conditions of
exercise" of the protected rights "does not impair the enforceability, on the
international plane, of the obligations they have assumed under Article 1(1)" of the
Convention; and it added that that conclusion was reinforced by the wording of
Article 2 of the Convention.3
2
At regional level, cf., for examples, European Court of Human Rights, Aperçus Trente-cinq années d'activité 1959-1994, Strasbourg, Council of Europe, 1995, pp. 70-83. At global (United Nations) level, one may recall, e.g. that in the Aumeeruddy-Cziffra and
Others case, the Human Rights Committee (under the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights),
in its Views of 09 April 1981, concluded that the State Party (Mauritius) should modify
provisions of its legislation on immigration and deportation (the Immigration (Amendment)
Act and the Deportation (Amendment) Act, both of 1997) in order to harmonize them with its
conventional obligations under the Covenant, and should provide "immediate remedies" to
the victims of the substantiated human rights violations. Cf. International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights, Human Rights Committee - Selected Decisions under the Optional
Protocol, vol. I, 1985, p. 71.
3
Enforceability of the Right to Reply or Correction (Arts. 14(1), 1(1) and 2 of the
American Convention on Human Rights), Advisory Opinion OC-7/86 of 29 August 1986,
Series A, n. 7, paragraphs 28-29. In their lucid Separate Opinions on that Advisory Opinion,
Judges R.E. Piza Escalante (loc. cit., paragraphs 25-33) and H. Gros Espiell (ibid., paragraph
6) argued that the obligation of Article 2 complements, but does not substitute or fulfil, the
unconditional and fundamental obligation of Article 1(1) of the American Convention.