be met prior to lodging the petition before the Commission – a non-judicial body it should be noted. And this is relevant insofar as “[t]he main function of the Commission shall be to promote respect for and defense of human rights”11 and, in exercise of this function, “to take action on petitions and other communications pursuant to its authority under the provisions of Articles 44 through 51 of this Convention,”12 including submission of the respective case to the Court.13 Thus, the Commission should promote and defend human rights and can even act as a plaintiff before the Court and, accordingly, does not necessarily share the impartiality that must characterize a judicial body. Consequently, Article 46(1)(a) of the Convention is also conceived as a limit to the actions of the Commission which may become a party in the consequent litigation that this non-judicial body has itself originated. Hence, the intention of this provision is to prevent the Commission from acting before the requirement or rule that it establishes has been duly complied with in a timely manner; in other words, from proceeding with the matter even though the domestic remedies have not been exhausted. And it is in the same spirit that the said Article 46(2) of the Convention specifically establishes the cases in which the rule of prior exhaustion of domestic remedies is not applicable; namely, inexistence of due process of law to exercise the domestic remedies, impossibility of exercising them, and delay in deciding them. Thus, this norm does not establish any other exceptions than those indicated; therefore, it is not admissible to cite, or even admit, an exception that is not established in the said article, because, if it were, this could strip the general rule established in Article 46(1)(a) of the Convention of any meaning or practical effects and, above all, it would leave its application to the discretion and, perhaps, the arbitrariness of the Commission. As a second general comment, it is worth calling attention to the reference made in Article 46(1)(a) of the Convention to the circumstance “that the remedies under domestic law have been pursued and exhausted in accordance with generally recognized principles of international law.” The allusion to such principles signifies that they are not the ones subsequently established in paragraph 2 of this article because, if they were, this allusion would not have been necessary. Accordingly, it is included in order to recall that the rule of prior exhaustion of domestic remedies is established by principles of international law, even prior to or irrespective of the provisions of any treaty, in this case the Convention, and that these principles involve other rules, such as the rule indicating that any objection that relates to the merits of the case in question is not strictly preliminary and must be decided when deciding on the merits. Third, attention should be called to the fact that, with regard to the provision transcribed above, the Judgment indicates that “[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.”14 The foregoing appears to signify that the Court would follow the thesis according to which the said rule, since it is conceived in the interests of the State, without 11 Article 41 of the Convention, first phrase. 12 Article 41(f) of the Convention. 13 Articles 51 and 61(1) of the Convention. 14 Para. 27 of the Judgment. 4