38. Moreover, inasmuch as the petition alleges violations of rights protected under the American Convention and said to have occurred within the territory of a State party, the Commission concludes that it has competence ratione loci to take cognizance of the petition. B. Admissibility requirements 1. Exhaustion of local remedies 39. Article 46(1)(a) of the American Convention provides that the admissibility of a petition is directly contingent upon whether the remedies under domestic law have been pursued and exhausted in accordance with generally recognized principles of international law. The Convention also provides that this requirement shall not apply when internal remedies are not available in fact or by law. Specifically, Article 46(2) sets forth exceptions to the general rule requiring exhaustion of domestic remedies, when the domestic laws do not afford due process of law for the protection of the rights whose violation is alleged; when the party alleging violation of his rights has been denied access to the remedies under domestic law or prevented from exhausting them; or when there has been an unwarranted delay in rendering a final judgment under those remedies. 40. The State alleges that the present case is inadmissible because remedies under domestic law in El Salvador remain to be exhausted. It argues that routine procedures are available in the criminal and constitutional justice systems that the petitioners could have used to assert their rights but did not. Specifically, it argues that the petitioners could have brought a criminal case, but did not, even though the courts were everywhere in the country and had jurisdiction in each of the departments, municipalities, towns, hamlets and cantons. The State adds that the petitioners also failed to exhaust other remedies available to them, such as complaints with the International Committee of the Red Cross or the Governmental Human Rights Commission. The State acknowledges that petitions of habeas corpus were filed on behalf of each disappeared child in 2003, but adds that these petitions could have been filed earlier rather than 20 years after the facts alleged. It also observes that if the petitions were dismissed, it was because the parties filing the petitions failed to produce evidence. 41. For their part, the petitioners contend that the remedies under domestic law are ineffective. Even so, they argue, they did attempt to get their cases examined. The petitioners observe that it has been 26 years since the disappearances of the two boys –Manuel Antonio Bonilla Osorio and Ricardo Ayala Abarca-, yet the Salvadoran authorities have done absolutely nothing to ensure the effectiveness of the investigation, to find those responsible and punish them, and to make reparations to the victims or their next of kin. They assert that at the time of the boys’ disappearance, no remedy suitable for establishing their whereabouts was accessible and that thereafter, the problems in the institutions charged with administering justice were notorious. The petitioners allege that once armed with a little more information and confidence in the Salvadoran courts, each of the mothers of the disappeared boys filed a petition of habeas corpus, one on February 18 and the other on February 27, 2003. But those petitions were dismissed and when no other state body was ordered to conduct an investigation into the children’s whereabouts, any possibility of justice for their next of kin was precluded. Summarizing, the petitioners insist that they are not required to exhaust any other domestic remedy, since the facts denounced fit the premise set forth in Article 46(2)(b) of the American Convention. 42. The Commission observes that in the present case, members of the Salvadoran Army are alleged to be implicated in the forced disappearance of two children during the internal armed conflict in El Salvador. That period was one of systematic violations of human rights and impunity, facilitated in part by the inefficacy of the Salvadoran judicial system.12 The 12 In the annual reports the Commission published during the years of the armed conflict, it addressed the violence and lack of effective judicial protection of rights on a number of occasions. For example: 7