20 suppress the enjoyment or exercise of the rights and freedoms recognized in this Convention or to restrict them to a greater extent than is provided for herein”. Consequently, it would be meaningless to suppose that a State which had freely decided to accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court had decided at the same time to restrict the exercise of its functions as foreseen in the Convention. On the contrary, the mere acceptance by the State leads to the overwhelming presumption that the State will subject itself to the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court. 91) The effect of the State’s third allegation would be to limit its recognition of the Court’s completely mandatory jurisdiction, with negative consequences for the exercise of the rights protected by the Convention. 92) The declaration formulated by the State of Trinidad and Tobago would allow it to decide in each specific case the extent of its own acceptance of the Court’s compulsory jurisdiction to the detriment of this Tribunal’s compulsory functions. In addition, it would give the State the discretional power to decide which matters the Court could hear, thus depriving the exercise of the Court’s compulsory jurisdiction of all efficacy. 93) Moreover, accepting the said declaration in the manner proposed by the State would lead to a situation in which the Court would have the State’s Constitution as its first point of reference, and the American Convention only as a subsidiary parameter, a situation which would cause a fragmentation of the international legal order for the protection of human rights, and which would render illusory the object and purpose of the Convention. 94) The American Convention and the other human rights treaties are inspired by a set of higher common values (centered around the protection of the human being), are endowed with specific supervisory mechanisms, are applied as a collective guarantee, embody essentially objective obligations, and have a special character that sets them apart from other treaties. The latter govern mutual interests between and among the States parties and are applied by them, with all the juridical consequences that follow there from for the international and domestic systems 11. 95) In this respect, in its Advisory Opinion on The Effect of Reservations on the Entry into Force of the American Convention on Human Rights (OC-2/82), the Court found that [m]odern human rights treaties in general, and the American Convention in particular, are not multilateral treaties of the traditional type concluded to accomplish the reciprocal exchange of rights for the mutual benefit of the contracting States. Their object and purpose is the protection of the basic rights of individual human beings irrespective of their nationality, both against the State of their nationality and all other contracting States. In concluding these human rights treaties, the States can be deemed to submit 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 12. 11 Cf. Constitutional Court Case. Competence. Supra note 8, para. 41 and Ivcher Bronstein Case. Competence. Supra note 8, para. 42. 12 The Effect of Reservations on the Entry into Force of the American Convention on Human Rights, Advisory Opinion OC-2/82. Supra note 6, para. 29.