5 the obligations of protection and the acceptance of the collective guarantee of compliance with these latter. This is the real meaning of the historical rescue of the individual as subject of the International Law of Human Rights. 13. Yet, at global level, it was necessary to wait until the first half of the seventies for the right of petition to be crystallized, in the conventional (human rights treaties and conventions) as well as extra-conventional (established by resolutions) mechanisms in the ambit of the United Nations. Parallel to that, at European regional level, the right of individual petition, together with the notion of collective guarantee, came to constitute the most remarkable features of the new system of protection inaugurated by the European Convention on Human Rights of 1950, and, a fortiori, of the International Law of Human Rights as a whole. 14. Three decades ago, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, René Cassin, who had participated in the preparatory process of its elaboration 15, pondered that "(...) S'il subsiste encore sur la terre, de grandes zones où des millions d'hommes ou de femmes résignés à leur destin n'osent pas proférer la moindre plainte ou même ne conçoivent pas qu'un recours quelconque soit possible, ces territoires se rétrécissent de jour en jour. La prise de conscience de ce qu'une émancipation est possible, est devenue de plus en plus générale. (...) La condition première de toute justice, c'est-à-dire la possibilité d'acculer les puissants à subir (...) un contrôle public, est remplie beaucoup plus souvent que jadis. (...) La plupart des Conventions et Pactes [des droits de l'homme], (...) incitent les États Parties àcréer chez eux des instances de recours et prévoient certaines mesures de protection ou de contrôle international. (...) Le fait que la résignation sans espoir, que le mur du silence et que l'absence de tout recours soient en voie de réduction ou de disparition, ouvre à l'humanité en marche des perspectives encourageantes. (...)" 16. 15. The assessment of the right of individual petition as a method of international implementation of human rights has necessarily to take into account the basic point of the legitimatio ad causam of the petitioners and of the conditions of the use and the admissibility of the petitions (set forth in the distinct instruments of human rights which foresee them). This is, precisely, the central aspect of the legal questions raised in the present case Castillo Petruzzi versus Peru, in its phase of preliminary objections. In this respect, the human rights treaties which provide for the right of individual petition 17 in their majority condition the exercise of this 15. As rapporteur of the Working Group of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, entrustred with the preparation of the Draft Declaration (May 1947 to June 1948). 16. R. Cassin, "Vingt ans après la Déclaration Universelle", 8 Revue de la Commission Internationale de Juristes (1967) n. 2, pp. 9-10. [Translation: "(...) If there still subsist on earth great zones where millions of men and women, resigned to their destiny, do not dare to utter the least complaint nor even to conceive that any remedy whatsoever is made possible, those territories diminish day after day. The awakening of conscience that an emancipation is possible, becomes increasingly more general. (...) The first condition of all justice, namely, the possibility of cornering the powerful so as to subject them to (...) public control, is nowadays fulfilled much more often than in the past. (...) The Conventions and Covenants [of human rights] in their majority, (...) urge the States Parties to create in them the instances of remedies and foresee certain measures of international protection or control. (...) The fact that the resignation without hope, that the wall of silence and that the absence of any remedy are in the process of reduction or disappearance, opens to moving humanity encouraging perspectives (...)". 17. At global level, the right of individual petition is provided for, e.g., in the [first] Optional Protocol to the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Articles 1-3 and 5), in the