bears the obligation to comply with it. The party obliged to do so, then, can only be the alleged victim, his representative or the petitioner, but not the State. 3. Timeliness of the petition As a second comment, it is appropriate to point out that the rule of prior exhaustion of domestic remedies logically constitutes a requirement that must be complied with prior to submitting the petition to the Commission and that the latter must be informed of such compliance or of the impossibility of doing so. Indeed, it should be borne in mind that Articles 46 and 47 refer to the “petition or communication lodged,” i.e., to an instantaneous act, which occurs at a given moment and is not prolonged over time. The same can be said with respect to Article 48(1)(a) of the Convention, which establishes that: “When the Commission receives a petition or communication alleging violation of any of the rights protected by this Convention, it shall proceed as follows: a) If it considers the petition or communication admissible, it shall request information from the government of the State indicated as being responsible for the alleged violations and shall furnish that government a transcript of the pertinent portions of the petition or communication. This information shall be submitted within a reasonable period to be determined by the Commission in accordance with the circumstances of each case. [...].” In other words, what the Convention states is that the “petition or communication lodged,” whose “pertinent portions” are transmitted to the State concerned, must indicate compliance with the requirement of prior exhaustion of domestic remedies - or the impossibility of doing so due to any of the circumstances set forth in Article 46(2) - which means that at the time of lodging said petition, this must have already taken place. This interpretation is reinforced by the provisions of Articles 46(1)(b) and 47(b), which state that the petition must have been: “lodged within a period of six months from the date on which the party alleging violation of his rights was notified of the final judgment.” Certainly, the final judgment is understood to mean the one handed down after the last appeal has been filed, without there being any other appeals pending. That is to say, the time limit for filing the application is counted from the moment of notification of the final decision issued by the national authorities or courts on the remedies that have been filed before them and which are, therefore, those that may have generated the international responsibility of the State, which obviously implies that these must have been exhausted at the time the petition was “lodged.” This idea is further reinforced by the wording of Article 46(1)(a) of the Convention insofar as it refers to the fact that “the remedies under domestic law have been pursued and exhausted, i.e., it alludes to something that has already occurred prior to presentation of the corresponding petition. 6