2 4. The private hearing held by the Court on February 4, 2008,1 during which the State, the representatives and the Commission referred to the degree of compliance with the Judgment. 5. The documents presented by the State and the representatives during the private hearing. CONSIDERING: 1. That one of the inherent attributes of the jurisdictional functions of the Court is to monitor compliance with its decisions. 2. That the State of Paraguay has been a State Party to the American Convention on Human Rights (hereinafter “the Convention” or “the American Convention”) since August 24, 1989, and accepted the jurisdiction of the Court on March 26, 1993. 3. That Article 68(1) of the American Convention stipulates that “[t]he States Parties to the Convention undertake to comply with the judgment of the Court in any case to which they are parties.” To this end, the State must ensure implementation at the national level of the Court’s decisions in its judgments.2 4. That, in view of the final and unappealable nature of the judgments of the Court, as established in Article 67 of the American Convention, they should be complied with fully and promptly by the State. 5. That the obligation to comply with the decisions in the Court’s judgments corresponds to a basic principle of the law of the international responsibility of the State, supported by international case law, according to which, a State must comply with its international treaty obligations in good faith (pacta sunt servanda) and, as this Court has already indicated and as established in Article 27 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, a party may not invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty.3 1 Pursuant to Article 6(2) of the Rules of Procedure, the Court held the hearing with a panel of judges composed of: Judge Diego García-Sayán, Vice President; Judge Sergio García Ramírez and Judge Rhadys Abreu Blondet. There appeared before the hearing: (a) for the Inter-American Commission: Isabel Madariaga and Lilly Ching, advisers; (b) for the State of Paraguay: Darío Díaz Camaraza, Attorney General; Arnaldo Frutos, Deputy Minister of the National Secretariat for Children and Adolescents; Julio Arriola, Chargé d’Affaires of the Republic of Paraguay to the Government of the Republic of Costa Rica; Edgar Fidias Taboada Ynsfrán, Director General of Human Rights of the Ministry of Justice and Labor; Francisco Barreiro Perrota, Director of Human Rights of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Nury Natalia Montiel Mallada, Director of Human Rights of the Supreme Court of Justice; Silvio Ortega Rolón, Director of Human Rights of the Ministry of Public Health and Social Welfare; Sonia Chávez Galeano, Head of Execution and Monitoring of Judgments; and, Stella Azuaga, Director General of the National Service for Juvenile Offenders; and (c) for the representatives of the victims: Carlos Marecos Aponte, Community Leader; Oscar Ayala Amarrilla, Julia Cabello Alonso and Jacob Nathaniel Kopas, from the organization Tierraviva for the indigenous peoples of the Chaco. 2 Cf. Baena Ricardo et al. v. Panama. Competence. Judgment of November 28, 2003. Series C No. 104, para. 131; García Asto and Ramírez Rojas v. Peru. Compliance with judgment. Order of the Court of July 12, 2007, fourth considering paragraph, and Molina Theissen v. Guatemala. Compliance with judgment. Order of the Court of July 10, 2007, second considering paragraph. 3 Cf. International Responsibility for the Promulgation and Enforcement of Laws in violation of the Convention (Arts. 1 and 2 American Convention on Human Rights). Advisory Opinion OC-14/94 of December 9, 1994. Series A No. 14, para. 35; García Asto and Ramírez Rojas v. Peru. Compliance with