will only have effect if done in accordance with Article 78, which requires one year’s
advance notice.
Article 29(a) of the American Convention provides that no provision of the Convention
shall be interpreted as permitting any State Party, group, or person to suppress the
enjoyment or exercise of the rights and freedoms recognized in the Convention or to
restrict them to a greater extent than is provided for therein. Any interpretation of the
Convention that allows a State Party to withdraw its recognition of the Court’s binding
jurisdiction, as Peru would in the instant case, would imply suppression of the exercise
of the rights and freedoms recognized in the Convention, it would be contrary to its
object and purpose as a human rights treaty, and it would deprive all the Convention’s
beneficiaries of the additional guarantee of protection of their human rights that the
Convention’s jurisdictional body affords.17
20.
As demonstrated above, the Inter-American Court has broadly interpreted
the procedural provisions of the American Convention for the purposes of complying
with its mandate as a body "with jurisdiction over matters related to compliance with
the commitments entered into by States Parties to [the] [American] Convention", in
accordance with Article 33 thereof. That interpretation has been executed in
accordance with the norms provided for both in the Vienna Convention on the Law of
Treaties as well as in the American Convention. The International Court of Justice
itself has stated that "it can[not] base itself on a purely grammatical interpretation of
the text. [The Court] must seek an interpretation which is harmonious with a natural
and reasonable way of reading the text [...]."18
III.
The jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to
order provisional measures to monitor compliance with
judgments.
21.
The Convention stipulates that the Inter-American Court may order
provisional measures "in matters brought before the Court." The Tribunal has
continually interpreted this provision using its constant jurisprudence and its various
Rules of Procedure, throughout its thirty years of operation, in the sense that it may
order such measures "at any stage of proceedings." Thus, on January 15, 1988, the
Court ordered provisional measures for the first time in three cases brought before
it.19 In practice, it has largely been at this stage of the procedure that the Court has
ordered provisional measures.
22.
The Court has already made numerous references to the precautionary and
protective nature of these types of measures:
17
Case of Ivcher Bronstein v. Peru. Competence. Judgment of September 24, 1999. Series C No.
54, para. 38, 40 and 41.
18
Cf. Case of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Case (United Kingdom v. Iran), Preliminary Objection,
Judgment of July 22, 1952, p. 104.
19
Cf. Cases of Velásquez Rodríguez, Fairén Garbi and Solís Corrales, and Godínez Cruz v. Honduras.
Order of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights of January 15, 1988. The Court was informed the in
the State witnesses who appeared before the Court were being killed.
7