2 omnes partes. Such petitions constitute, in this way, a mechanism par excellence of action of collective guarantee. 4. The actio popularis, originated in Roman law, was conceived for the safeguard of the public or general interest, which, on its turn, would presumably secure the individual interest; it thus recognized the solidarity between the interests of the community and those of the individual8. But if it were necessary to draw a parallel between and international petition on behalf of a human collectivity, as the Community of Peace of San José of Apartadó in the cas d'espèce, and an institute of domestic law, or of comparative law, I would be inclined to identify a corresponding element in the so-called class action. In reality, the question of the determination of the contents of the common interest of a community seems to me to be rather underlying the class actions. These latter developed historically by a procedural necessity, whenever an individual, member of a community, takes legal action in order to prevent (as in the present context) or remedy an individual harm, which coincides with the harm to all the members of such community. This is, thereby, a legal action of protection of those who are defenceless. 5. There seem to be points of contact or approximations between the class action and the actio popularis, but the former seems to me to require more clearly the existence of victims, even though potential. The question has simply not been dealt with to date, with the due attention that it requires, on the part of the jusinternationalist doctrine. There is pressing need to do it, as the question has implications for the identification of the effective means to face the new challenges of the international protection of human rights in our days. The present case of the Community of Peace of San José of Apartadó before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights invites us to a reflection on the matter. 6. The fact that the mechanism of the aforementioned inter-State petitions, as the embryo of the actio popularis under the American Convention, has not been utilized in the inter-American system of protection so far, suggests that the States Parties to the Convention have not yet disclosed their determination to construct a true international ordre public based upon the respect for human rights. But this may perhaps come to occur in the future, with the growing conscientization of the need to achieve greaer cohesion and institutionalization in the international legal order, above all in the present domain of protection. 7. One ought to keep always in mind, as I pointed out in my Separate Opinion in the Las Palmeras case (Preliminary Objections, 2000), that "(...) there could hardly be better examples of mechanism for application of the obligations erga omnes of protection (at least in the relations of the States Parties inter se) than the methods of supervision foreseen in the human rights treaties themselves, for the exercise of the collective guarantee of the protected rights9. In other words, the mechanisms for 8 . R. von Ihering, El Fin en el Derecho, Buenos Aires, Omeba Ed., 1960 (reed.), p. 271. As Ihering recalled in The Spirit of Roman Law (VIII, part I), by means of the actiones populares any person could act as representative of the law, what stimulated the "idealist spirit" which, "without having an interest of one's own, defends the law for the law's sake"; R. von Ihering, A Luta pelo Direito, São Paulo, Ed. M. Claret, 2000 (reed.), p. 63 n. 11. 9 . Y. Dinstein, "The Erga Omnes Applicability of Human Rights", 30 Archiv des Völkerrechts (1992) pp. 16 and 22, and cf. 16-37; and cf. M. Byers, "Conceptualising the Relationship between Jus Cogens and Erga