petition meets the admissibility requirements, including the requirement of exhaustion of domestic remedies,” and that “it is when examining admissibility that the Commission decides whether or not the petition complies with this requirement, or whether any of the exceptions established in the Convention are applicable. 40 This appears to suggest that the Judgment follows the thesis set out in this opinion; namely, that it is on the adversarial proceedings established or constituted by the petition and the corresponding observations of the State that the Commission’s decision on the admissibility or inadmissibility of the “lodged” petition should be based. However, this is not so. The second reason indicated in the Judgment to reject the said preliminary objection is that “the Commission’s Rules of Procedure make a distinction between the time at which the initial processing is carried out, when it only examines whether the petition includes information on “any steps taken to exhaust domestic remedies, or the impossibility of doing so,” and the moment when it decides on admissibility, when it determines whether such remedies were exhausted, or applies an exception to this requirement.”41 Thus, the Judgment appears to lessen the obligation contained in Article 28(h) of the Commission’s Rules of Procedure or to place the emphasis on the fact that the petition must include “information,” rather than that this information must be specifically on “any steps taken to exhaust domestic remedies, or the impossibility of doing so.” In other words, it appears that, according to the Judgment, it is sufficient that a general mention is made of some information on such steps in order to meet the requirement to consider the petition, and not that the steps taken up until that time – that is, up until the lodging of the petition - to exhaust such remedies are indicated clearly and specifically. To the contrary, this opinion affirms that the obligation established in Article 28(h) is not merely that of providing “information” that steps were taken, but rather to provide specific “information” on “any steps taken to exhaust domestic remedies, or the impossibility of doing so.” Hence, the obligation consists in describing the steps specifically taken which mean that the said remedies have already been exhausted or indicating the impossibility of exhausting them. This obligation does not consist, consequently, in providing general information that steps were taken, but in providing specific information on the steps that were taken and that prove that either the domestic remedies were exhausted, or that it was impossible to do this. The third reason cited by the Judgment to reject the objection in question is indicated as follows: “[t]he Court recalls that the rule of prior exhaustion of domestic remedies was conceived in the interests of the State, because it seeks to exempt it from responding before an international organ for acts it is accused of before it has had the occasion to remedy them by its own means. Nevertheless, the subsidiary nature of the interAmerican system is not affected by the fact that the analysis of compliance with the requirement of exhaustion of domestic remedies is made based on the situation when a decision is taken on a petition’s admissibility. To the contrary, if any domestic remedy is pending, the State has the opportunity to resolve the situation alleged during the admissibility stage.”42 With this assertion, the Judgment forgets that compliance with the rule of prior exhaustion of domestic remedies is basically an obligation that, even though it may benefit the State 40 Para. 26 of the Judgment. 41 Para. 26 of the Judgment. 42 Para. 27 of the Judgment. 16

Select target paragraph3