17
26.
The Permanent Council delivers the report to its Commission on Juridical and
Political Affairs, that hears the presentation thereof made by the President of the
Court, conducts deliberations on the report and adopts a resolution that is
communicated to the Permanent Council that, in its turn, communicates it to the
General Assembly. In practice, what happens is that the decision adopted by the CJPA
is the same that is communicated to and approved by the Council and the General
Assembly. And the text of the resolution is approved by the CJPA by consensus. It is
enough that the State that the Court mentions as not having complied with the
judgment, opposes to be urged, through the resolution, to inform the Court on its
compliance with the judgment, for such urging not to be made in the resolution to be
approved by the CJPA and, consequently, by the Permanent Council and the General
Assembly.
That is, the procedure established by the OAS causes the information on a decision
pronounced by the Court pursuant to article 65 of the Convention not to be known, let
alonediscussed by the General Assembly. And this is what happened in the case of
Hilaire, Constantine, Benjamin et al. v. Trinidad and Tobago, and the same may occur
to the reparations ordered by the Court in the instant case of Caesar v. Trinidad and
Tobago.
27.
However, Resolution AG/RES. 2043 (XXXIV-0-04), “Observations and
Recommendations on the Annual Report of the Inter-American Court of Human
Rights”, approved by the General Assembly at the meeting held in Quito, in 2004,
includes as its operative paragraph 4 the exact words that follow:
To reiterate the need for States Party to provide the information requested by
the Court in order to enable it to fully meet its obligation to report to the
General Assembly on compliance with its judgments.
A very significant step forward, albeit not sufficient as it does not mention which State
or States must provide such information. But in the same Resolution, as well as in that
approved by the General Assembly in Santiago de Chile, in 2003, AG/RES. 1918
(XXXIII-0-03), also on the “Observations and Recommendations to the Annual Report
of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights”, Trinidad and Tobago requested
recording of its reservation made regarding operative paragraphs 9 and 7,
respectively, both of which have a similar wording:
To urge OAS member states to consider signing and ratifying or acceding to, as
the case may be, the American Convention on Human Rights and other
instruments of the system, including acceptance of the binding jurisdiction of
the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
VII
The consequences of the completeness gap in the American Convention on
Human Rights making Article 65 thereof ineffective
28.
The consequence of the American Convention failing to establish a mechanism
to implement and make Article 65 thereof effective, in addition to the processing in
the Organization of American States of the Court’s annual report, is that, upon
reviewing the list of cases and provisional measures submitted to the Court for
consideration pursuant to its judicial functions, a false impression is created of the
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