80. The Inter-American Convention on Protecting the Human Rights of Older Persons, to which Peru is a party, 89 has developed and defined this principle by recognizing the States’ obligations to guarantee equality and non-discrimination (Article 3(d)), proper treatment and preferential care (Article 3(k)) and effective judicial protection (Article 3(n)). Article 31 of this international treaty also recognizes the right to access to justice 90 and states that “older persons have the right to a hearing, with due guarantees and within a reasonable time, by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal, previously established by law, in the substantiation of any accusation of a criminal nature made against them or for the determination of their rights and obligations of a civil, labor, fiscal, or any other nature.” Paragraph three of that article states that “the States Parties shall ensure due diligence and preferential treatment to the older person for the processing, settlement of and enforcement of decisions in legal and administrative proceedings at any stage.” This creates a right to a preferential treatment for older persons in the enforcement of judgments in their favor and a correlative State duty to guarantee a diligent, prompt and effective access to justice for older persons, in administrative as well as legal processes.91 81. This obligation to guarantee the effective judicial protection of older persons and, especially, to promote accelerated procedures, is also reflected in other instruments of international law such as the Brasilia Regulations on access to justice for vulnerable people, adopted by the XIV IberoAmerican Judicial Summit in 2008 and updated at the XIX Summit in 2018. Pursuant to Section 2 of those Rules, vulnerable people are defined as follows: 1.- Definition of vulnerable people (3) A person or a group of persons are vulnerable, when their capacity to prevent, resist or overcome an impact that places them at risk, are not developed, are limited by diverse circumstances to fully exercise their rights before the justice system as recognized by law. Vulnerable people are defined here as those who, due to reasons of age, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity, physical or mental state, or due to social, economic ethnic and/or cultural circumstances, or related to their religious practices or creeds or the absence thereof have special difficulties to fully exercise the rights recognized by the juridical order before the system of justice. (4) The following may constitute causes of vulnerability: age, disability, belonging to indigenous communities or to other ethnic-cultural diversities, including Afro-descendant persons, as well as caused by victimization migration, refugee status and internal displacement, poverty, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity and deprivation of liberty. The specific determination of vulnerable people in each country will depend on their specific characteristics, and even on their level of social and economic development. 2.- Age […] (6) Ageing can also constitute a cause of vulnerability if an elderly adult person finds special difficulties , on the basis of their functional abilities and/or economic and social barriers, to exercise their rights before the justice system, with full respect for their dignity. 82. Specifically, with respect to access to justice of vulnerable persons, Regulation 38 establshes: (38) Swiftness and priority. The necessary measures shall be adopted to avoid delays in processing each case, guaranteeing a prompt judicial resolution, as well as the fast execution of the resolution. When the circumstances of the situation of vulnerability so require, priority shall be given to the attention, resolution and execution of the case by the bodies of the system of justice. A visible notice shall be placed on the files, Peru deposited its instrument of accession to the Inter-American Convention on Protecting the Human Rights of Older Persons on March 1, 2021. 90 The San José Charter on the rights of older persons of Latin America and the Caribbean, adopted at the Third Regional Intergovernmental Conference on ageing in Latin America and the Caribbean of 2012, establishes in its Paragraph 5 that “access to justice is an essential human right and the fundamental instrument for guaranteeing that older persons are able to exercise and actively defend their rights”. 91 Cf. Case of Teachers of Chañaral and other municipalities v. Chile, supra, para. 149. 89 22