11
ESCER should not be directly justiciable through the application of Article 26 of the Convention, since
the said article did not list a catalogue of rights, or recognize or enshrine ESCER, but merely
established the States’ commitment to progressively achieve the full realization of the rights that
could be derived from the Charter of the Organization of American States (hereinafter “OAS
Charter”), subject to available resources. In this regard, the only obligation derived from Article 26
that could be directly supervised was compliance with the obligation of progressive development and
the duty of non-retrogression. Thus, it could not be argued that a case concerning the alleged
violation of some of the rights referred to could be submitted to the Court. The aforementioned lack
of jurisdiction was confirmed by the Protocol of San Salvador, in which the States decided to allow
justiciability only in two cases, which constituted a subsequent agreement and practice among the
States parties. Accordingly, the State took the view that that the Court could not assume competence
for the alleged violation of a right or freedom “not included either in the Convention or in the Protocol
of San Salvador” and that the principle of progressive interpretation of international instruments
could not be invoked in order to add rights to the protection system, since that principle was applied
to attribute to an existing right, already included in said regime, a different and generally broader
meaning than that originally given.
31. The Commission argued that this case was submitted to the Court prior to the case law
advances related to Article 26 of the American Convention. Therefore, it considered that the analysis
of the right to social security in the context of Article 26, in addition to the rights already claimed,
“would indeed contribute to its insertion in the evolution of the inter-American system and to a
broader understanding of the scope of international responsibility.”
32. The representatives argued that Article 26 of the Convention should be justiciable under Article
62(3), which establishes the Court’s jurisdiction to hear any case submitted to it related to the
interpretation and application of the provisions of the Convention, and that the aforementioned
provision formed part of the treaty. Similarly, they indicated that the violation of the Protocol of San
Salvador had not been claimed, but that it had been mentioned by way of illustration, since it formed
part of the inter-American corpus juris that could be used as a parameter for the interpretation of
the Convention. Finally, they concluded that “the right to social security was a human right protected
by international law and implicitly contained in Article 26 of the Convention.”
B.2 Considerations of the Court
33. In accordance with the reasons outlined previously, regarding the analysis of the State’s
arguments concerning its preliminary objection on the Court’s lack of jurisdiction ratione materiae
(supra paras. 20 and 30), it is for the Court to determine whether it is competent to analyze, directly,
the right to social security based on the interpretation of Article 26 the Convention.
34. The Court emphasizes that in the case of Acevedo Buendía et al. (“Discharged and Retired
Employees of the Comptroller’s Office”) v. Peru, it was called upon to settle a preliminary objection
regarding the right to social security based on an interpretation of Article 26 of the Convention. In
that decision, the Court concluded, in general terms that, pursuant to Article 62(1) of the Convention,
it would be competent to decide whether the State had violated or failed to comply with any of the
rights of the Convention, including Article 26 thereof. However, the Court did not offer an
interpretation as to whether the right to social security was derived from the OAS Charter nor did it
consider the San Salvador Protocol with respect to Peru, which is a State party thereto.22
22
In this case the Court did not declare a violation of Article 26 of the Convention nor did it analyze the State’s obligation
to ensure progressive development and the duty of non-retrogression, which was the focus of the Court’s analysis of Article
26.