I INTRODUCTION OF THE CASE AND PURPOSE OF THE APPLICATION 1. On March 8, 2011, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (hereinafter “the Inter-American Commission” or “the Commission”) submitted to the jurisdiction of the Court, in accordance with Articles 51 and 61 of the American Convention, case No. 10,720 against the Republic of El Salvador (hereinafter also “the Salvadoran State,” “the State” or “El Salvador”). The initial petition was lodged before the Commission on October 30, 1990, by Oficina de Tutela Legal del Arzobispado de San Salvador (OTLA). On April 5, 2000 the petitioners accredited the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) as co-petitioner in this case. The Commission declared the petition admissible in Admissibility Report No. 24/06 of March 2, 2006. 1 On November 3, 2010, it approved Report on Merits No. 177/10 (hereinafter “the merits report”), under Article 50 of the Convention, in which it made a series of recommendations to the State. On December 8, 2010, this report was notified to the State, which was granted two months to comply with the Commission’s recommendations. In view of the State’s failure to present information, the Commission decided to submit the case to the Court’s jurisdiction. The Commission appointed Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro and Santiago A. Canton, at the time Commissioner and Executive Secretary, respectively, as delegates, and its Deputy Executive Secretary Elizabeth Abi-Mershed, together with Isabel Madariaga and Silvia Serrano Guzmán, lawyers at the Commission’s Executive Secretariat, as legal advisers. 2. The case relates to the alleged successive massacres committed between December 11 and 13, 1981, in the context of a military operation by the Atlacatl Battalion, together with other military units, in seven places in the northern part of the department of Morazán, Republic of El Salvador, during which approximately 1,000 people were killed, “including an alarming number of children,” as well as to the alleged investigation that was opened into these events and the “decision of September 27, 1993, to halt it based on the Law of General Amnesty for the Consolidation of Peace, which is still in force in El Salvador” and, finally, to the alleged exhumations performed over the following years, without leading to the reactivation of the investigations, “despite reiterated requests to the corresponding authorities.” 3. According to the Commission, the alleged massacres of the instant case occurred during the ruthless period of the so-called “counterinsurgency” operations, deployed against civilians on a massive scale by the Salvadoran army during the armed conflict. It was the systematic and generalized nature of this type of action, designed to terrorize the population, which allows it to be concluded that the alleged massacres of the instant case constituted “one of the most heinous manifestations of the crimes against humanity committed at the time by the Salvadoran military.” However, owing to the alleged validity of the Law of General Amnesty for the Consolidation of Peace, as well as reiterated omissions by the State, these grave events remain unpunished. 4. In its merits report, the Commission reached the conclusion that the State of El Salvador was internationally responsible for violating:   The rights to life, to personal integrity and to personal liberty established in Articles 4, 5, and 7 of the American Convention in relation to Article 1(1) thereof, to the detriment of the victims who were extrajudicially executed; The special obligations with regard to children, established in Article 19 of the American Convention, in relation to Article 1(1) of this instrument, to the to the detriment of the children who were extrajudicially executed; 1 In this report, the Commission declared that petition No. 10,720 was admissible in relation to the presumed violation of Articles 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 19, 21 and 25 of the American Convention in relation to the obligations established in Article 1(1) and 2 of this treaty. 4