3 the right of petition contributed also to secure respect for the obligations of objective character which are incumbent upon the States Parties6. In several cases the exercise of the right of petition has gone even further, generating changes in the domestic legal order and in the practice of the public organs of the State7. The significance of the right of individual petition can only be appropiately assessed in historical perspective. 9. In fact, the historia juris of some countries discloses that the old right to petition, at domestic level, to the central authorities, as expression or manifestation of the freedom of expression, gradually developed into a legal remedy to be interposed before the tribunals for the reparation for damages8. Only in a more recent epoch the right of petition (no longer right to petition) was formed within the ambit of international organizations. The first classic distinctions appeared, such as that elaborated by Feinberg9 and endorsed by Drost10, between pétition plainte, based upon a violation of an individual private right (e.g., a civil right) and in search of reparation on the part of the authorities, and pétition voeu, pertaining to the general interests of a group (e.g., a political right) and in search of public measures on the part of the authorities. 5. For example, under Article 25 of the European Convention on Human Rights; cf. H. Rolin, "Le rôle du requérant dans la procédure prévue par la Commission européenne des droits de l'homme", 9 Revue hellénique de droit international (1956) pp. 3-14, esp. p. 9; C.Th. Eustathiades, "Les recours individuels à la Commission européenne des droits de l'homme", in Grundprobleme des internationalen Rechts - Festschrift für Jean Spiropoulos, Bonn, Schimmelbusch & Co., 1957, p. 121; F. Durante, Ricorsi Individuali ad Organi Internazionali, Milano, Giuffrè, 1958, pp. 125-152, esp. pp. 129-130; K. Vasak, La Convention européenne des droits de l'homme, Paris, LGDJ, 1964, pp. 96-98; M. Virally, "L'accès des particuliers à une instance internationale: la protection des droits de l'homme dans le cadre européen", 20 Mémoires Publiés par la Faculté de Droit de Genève (1964) pp. 67-89; H. Mosler, "The Protection of Human Rights by International Legal Procedure", 52 Georgetown Law Journal (1964) pp. 818-819. 6. It is to be always born in mind that, distinctly from the questions governed by Public International Law, in their majority raised horizontally above all at inter-State level, the questions pertaining to human rights are found vertically at intra-State level, in the contraposition between the States and the human beings under their respective jurisdictions. Accordingly, to pretend that the organs of internacional protection cannot verify the compatibility of the norms and practices of domestic law, and their ommissions, with the international norms of protection, would not make sense. Here as well the specificity of the International Law of Human Rights becomes evident. The fact that this latter goes beyond Public International Law in the matter of protection, so as to comprise the treatment dispensed by the States to the human beings under their jurisdictions, does not mean that a conservative interpretation ought thereby to apply; quite on the contrary, what applies is an interpretation in conformity with the innovative character - in relation to dogmas of the past, such as that of the "exclusive national competence" or reserved domain of the States, as an emanation of State sovereignty, - of the international norms of protection of human rights. With the development of the International Law of Human Rights, it is Public International Law itself which is enriched, in the assertion of canons and principles proper to the present domain of protection, grounded on fundamentally distinct premises from those which have guided its postulates at the level of purely inter-State relations. The International Law of Human Rights thus comes to affirm the aptitude of Public International Law to secure, in the present context, compliance with the international obligations of protection on the part of States vis-à-vis all human beings under their jurisdictions. 7. J. Humphrey, "The Right of Petition in the United Nations", 4 Revue des droits de l'homme/Human Rights Journal (1971) p. 463. 8. N. Feinberg, "La pétition en droit international", 40 Recueil des Cours de l'Académie de Droit International de La Haye (1932) pp. 576-639. 9. P.N. Drost, Human Rights as Legal Rights, Leyden, Sijthoff, 1965, pp. 67-75, and cf. pp. 91-96 and 101.