CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE DE ROUX RENGIFO I believe I might have other arguments to add to those given under the consideranda of the order in this case, in support of the Court’s decision to maintain, for at least a reasonable length of time, the provisional measures ordered on behalf of Anthony Briggs. The circumstances of the instant case are unique. The Court has ordered provisional measures to prevent irreparable harm to a person sentenced to death, while his case is in process with the inter-American human rights system. In order to take this case to a higher level, the Inter-American Commission has already submitted the reports to which articles 50 and 51 of the American Convention on Human Rights refer. However, as neither the Commission nor the State has as yet formally submitted the instant case to the Court, one would have thought that provisional measures would have become superfluous once the reports in question were issued, particularly the report provided for under Article 51 of the Convention. But matters are not so simple. Were the Court to call for the measures to be lifted immediately, it would be disregarding the absolutes that follow from a full and balanced interpretation of the provisions of chapters VI, VII and VIII of the Pact of San José, which define the structure of the inter-American system for the protection of human rights and legislate the membership and functions of the organs of that system, which must work in tandem to accomplish the system’s purposes. Had it not prolonged the life of the provisional measures, the Court would have been disregarding the combined scope of articles 50, 51 and 63(2) of the Convention. The Court has held that “in accordance with the principle of good faith, embodied in […] Article 31(1) of the Vienna Convention [on the Law of Treaties], if a State signs and ratifies an international treaty, especially one concerning human rights, such as the American Convention, it has the obligation to make every effort to apply the recommendations of a protection organ such as the Inter-American Commission, which is, indeed, one of the principal organs of the Organization of American States, whose function is “to promote the observance and defense of human rights” (Loayza Tamayo Case, Judgement of September 17, 1997. Series C No. 33, para. 80). The “obligation to make every effort to apply the recommendations” of the Inter-American Commission has multiple ramifications. Clearly the State must take a constructive attitude toward those recommendations, carefully and deliberately study the steps and measures it must take to comply with them, find ways to sort out any obstacles that might prevent it from taking the measures in question, and apply the measures to the fullest should the obstacles prove not to be insurmountable. Given the foregoing, the Court could hardly deny the protection of its provisional measures to anyone whose rights had been protected by express recommendations of the InterAmerican Commission, right from the time those recommendations became final. When articles 50, 51 and 63.2 are read in combination, it becomes clear that the proper course of action is to prolong those measures for a reasonable period, so as to ensure that a time frame can be established during which the State truly makes “every effort to apply the recommendations […] of the Inter-American Commission” before any irreparable harm is done (which in the instant case means before Anthony Briggs is executed). Judge Carlos Vicente de Roux-Rengifo