2 because this reinforces or complements the domestic jurisdiction.”2 The Court has established that State responsibility: Can only be required at the international level after the State has had the opportunity to examine it and to declare it by means of remedies within the domestic jurisdiction, and to repair the damage caused. The international jurisdiction is of a subsidiary, reinforcing and complementary nature.3 6. Hence, the States of the Americas have wanted to leave it sufficient clear that the protection system established by the American Convention on Human Rights does not substitute the national jurisdictions, but rather complements them.4 “After all, the State’s international responsibility arises when a violation is committed – as a direct result of failure to comply with or violation of the obligation, also international, that it assumed – but the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court is not necessarily brought into play. This will be deployed in the hypothesis that the domestic jurisdiction does not function.”5 7. Furthermore, the Court has explained that: The American Convention is a multilateral treaty under which States Parties undertake to respect and ensure the rights and freedoms recognized therein and to comply with any reparations ordered. The Convention is the cornerstone of the system for the protection of human rights in America. This system is a two-tiered system: a local or national tier consisting of each State’s obligation to guarantee the rights and freedoms recognized in the Convention and punish violations committed. If a specific case is not resolved at the local or national level, the Convention provides an international tier where the principal bodies are the Commission and this Court. But as the Preamble to the Convention states, the international protection is “reinforcing or complementing the protection provided by the domestic law of the American states.” Consequently, when a question has been definitively settled under domestic law – to use the language of the Convention – the matter need not be brought to this Court for “approval” or “confirmation.”6 8. The American Convention imposes on the States Parties the obligation to ensure that presumed victims have effective remedies before the domestic courts against violations of the rights recognized in the treaties or under domestic laws,7 and establishes the correlative obligation of complainants to exhaust previously the remedies under domestic law as a condition for the admissibility of their petitions at the international level. The establishment of these complementary obligations underscores the necessary interaction that must exist between international law and domestic law in the sphere of the protection of human rights. 9. The principle of subsidiarity of the inter-American system for the protection of human rights implies that the States – through their domestic organs and authorities – bear the primary responsibility to respect and guarantee, within their sphere of jurisdiction, the human rights embodied in the international laws of protection and to 2 Velásquez Rodríguez v. Honduras. Merits. Judgment of July 29, 1988. Series C No. 4, para. 61. 3 Perozo et al. v. Venezuela. Preliminary objections, merits, reparations and costs. Judgment of January 28, 2009. Series C No. 195, para. 64. 4 FAÚNDEZ LEDESMA, Héctor, El agotamiento de los recursos internos en el sistema interamericano de protección de los derechos humanos, IIDH/IIHR, San José, Costa Rica, 2007, p. 43. 5 GARCÍA RAMÍREZ, Sergio, “El sistema interamericano de protección de los derechos humanos. La Corte Interamericana,” in La jurisdicción interamericana de Derechos Humanos, CIDH/IACHR and Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Mexico, 2006, p. 90. 6 Case of Las Palmeras v. Colombia. Merits. Judgment of December 6, 2001. Series C No. 90, para. 33. 7 American Convention on Human Rights, Article 25(1).