12. The private hearing held by the Court at its seat in San José, Costa Rica, on February 25, 2011.1 CONSIDERING THAT: 1. One of the inherent attributes of the jurisdictional functions of the Court is to monitor compliance with its decisions. 2. |Columbia has been a State Party to the American Convention on Human Rights (hereinafter “the American Convention” or “the Convention”) since July 31, 1973, and accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court on June 21, 1985. 3. In accordance with the provisions of Article 67 of the American Convention, the State must comply fully and promptly with the Court's judgments. Furthermore, Article 68(1) of the American Convention stipulates that “the State Parties to the Convention undertake to comply with the Court's decisions in any case to which they are parties.” To this end, States must ensure the domestic implementation of the provisions of the Court's decisions.2 4. The obligation to comply with the Court's rulings corresponds to a basic principle of international law, supported by international jurisprudence, in accordance with which States must abide by their international treaty obligations in good faith (pacta sunt servanda) and, as this Court has indicated and as established in Article 27 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, a party may not invoke the 1 The hearing was attended by: (a) for the Inter-American Commission: Lilly Ching Soto, Specialist Attorney for the Executive Secretariat; (b) for the representatives of the victims: John Arturo Cárdenas Mesa; Juliana Bravo Valencia; Erick Benjamín Aldana Mendoza and María Victoria Fallon Morales from the Grupo Interdisciplinario por los Derechos Humanos (GIDH), and (c) for the State of Colombia: Juan Carlos Forero Ramírez, Assistant Prosecutor General; Hernán Jaime Ulloa Venegas, Director of the Presidential Human Rights Program; Francisco Javier Echeverri Lara, Director of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law, Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Gloria Beatriz Gaviria Ramos, Head of the Cooperation and International Relations Office of the Ministry of Social Protection; Alex de Jesús Salgado Lozano, Director of Legal Affairs of the Ministry of National Defense; Elena Ambrosi Turbay, Director of Human Rights of the Ministry of National Defense; Hernando Castañeda Ariza, Head of the National Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Unit of the Office of the Prosecutor General; Jorge Alexander Vargas Mesa, Executive Director for the National Housing Fund; Cesar Vergara Gutiérrez, Advisor to the Sub-Directorate for Attention to the Displaced Population – Social Action; Paulina Gómez Borda, Chargé d’affaires, Embassy of Colombia in Costa Rica; Felipe Medina Ardila, Coordinator of the Inter-institutional Task Force; Claudia Paola Redondo Polo, Advisor to the Inter-institutional Task Force; General Orlando Páez Barón, Inspector General of the National Police; Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Arango Alzáte, Coordinator of the Human Rights Group of the National Police, and Daniel Vásquez Franco, Director of the Housing System of the Vice Ministry for Housing and Territorial Development. 2 Cf. Case of Baena Ricardo et al. Competence. Judgment of November 28, 2003. Series C No. 104, para. 60; Case of the Dismissed Congressional Workers (Aguado Alfaro et al.) v. Peru. Monitoring compliance with judgment. Order of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights of November 24, 2010, third considering paragraph, and Case of Vargas Areco v. Paraguay. Monitoring compliance with judgment. Order of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights of November 24, 2010, third considering paragraph. 3