12 themselves to a legal order within which they, for the common good, assume various obligations, not in relation to other States, but towards all individuals within their jurisdiction. (paragraph 29) 43. That finding is consistent with the case-law of other international jurisdictional bodies. For example, in its Advisory Opinion on Reservations to the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1951), the International Court of Justice held that with treaties of this nature, “the contracting States do not have any individual advantages or disadvantages nor interests of their own, but merely a common interest; hence the Convention’s raison d’être is to accomplish its purposes.” 44. For their part, the European Commission and Court of Human Rights (hereinafter “the European Commission” and “the European Court”) have arrived at similar findings. In the Austria vs. Italy case (1961), the European Commission declared that the obligations undertaken by the States Parties to the European Convention on Human Rights (hereinafter “the European Convention”) “are essentially objective in nature, and intended to protect the fundamental rights of human beings against violations on the part of the High Contracting Parties, rather than to create subjective and reciprocal rights between the High Contracting Parties.”2 Similarly, in Ireland vs. the United Kingdom (1978), the European Court held the following: Unlike international treaties of the classic kind, the Convention comprises more than mere reciprocal engagements between contracting States. It creates, over and above a network of mutual, bilateral undertakings, objective obligations which, in the words of the Preamble, benefit from a “collective enforcement”.3 In the Soering vs. United Kingdom case (1989), the European Court declared that in interpreting the European Convention “regard must be had to its special character as a treaty for the collective enforcement of human rights and fundamental freedoms…. Thus, the object and purpose of the Convention as an instrument for the protection of individual human beings require that its provisions be interpreted and applied so as to make its safeguards practical and effective.”4 45. The optional clause recognizing the contentious jurisdiction of the InterAmerican Court is of particular importance to the operation of the system of protection embodied in the American Convention. When a State consents to that clause, it binds itself to the whole of the Convention and is fully committed to guaranteeing the international protection of human rights that the Convention embodies. A State Party may only release itself from the Court’s jurisdiction by renouncing the treaty as a whole (cf. supra 39, infra 49). The instrument whereby it recognizes the Court’s jurisdiction must, therefore, be weighed in light of the object and purpose of the Convention as a human rights treaty. 2. European Commission of Human Rights, Decision as to the Admissibility of Application No. 788/60, Austria vs. Italy case, Yearbook of the European Convention on Human Rights, The Hague, M. Nijhoff, 1961, p. 140. 3. European Court of Human Rights, Ireland vs. United Kingdom case, judgment of 18 January 1978, Series A no. 25, p. 90, paragraph 239. 4. European Court of Human Rights, Soering Case, decision of 26 January 1989, Series A no. 161, paragraph 87.