71 by formal procedures and has not published regulations or issued procedures that applicants may use to request a review of the adverse decisions of the civil status registrars. Consequently, the State does not offer an effective remedy that would allow the children Dilcia and Violeta to contest the Civil Status Registrar’s refusal; (c) The resolution of remedies of amparo and unconstitutionality can take up to two years; accordingly, in the Dominican Republic, there is no simple recourse, and this constitutes a violation of Article 25 of the Convention, and (d) The State deprived the children of the procedural guarantees embodied in Article 8 of the Convention by not granting them the right to be heard in a judicial proceeding on the denial of birth certificates. Under the former legislation and the new decision of the Central Electoral Board, when a civil registrar refuses to issue a birth certificate, this official must immediately request the Central Electoral Board to review the case, without providing the applicants with any type of document. Arguments of the State 200. The State argued that there cannot be a violation of the right to judicial protection when the alleged victims have never made use of these mechanisms. The children had a series of administrative and judicial guarantees at their disposal and they failed to use them, alleging that they knew nothing about their existence or how they functioned; thus the alleged victims are responsible for not having used these recourses, and this cannot be attributed to the State. Considerations of the Court 201. The Court will not refer to the alleged violations of Articles 8 and 25 of the American Convention, because it lacks jurisdiction to rule on possible violations based on facts or acts that occurred prior to March 25, 1999, the date on which the Dominican Republic accepted the contentious jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court. XII ARTICLES 5 AND 12 OF THE AMERICAN CONVENTION (Right to Humane Treatment and Freedom of Conscience and Religion) 202. In the final part of their brief with final arguments, the representatives indicated that the State had violated, among others, Articles 5 (Right to Humane Treatment) and 12 (Freedom of Conscience and Religion) of the Convention; however, they did not submit any arguments to support these alleged violations. Considerations of the Court 203. With regard to the alleged violations of Articles 5 and 12 of the American Convention, which the representatives only indicated in the final part of the brief with final arguments, and which were not included in the brief with requests and