17 d. the petition or communication is substantially the same as one previously studied by the Commission or by another international organization. 53. The phrase “substantially the same” signifies that there should be identity between the cases. In order for this identity to exist, the presence of three elements is necessary, these are: that the parties are the same, that the object of the action is the same and that the legal grounds are identical. In the instant case there is no duplication of proceedings. 54. With regard to the subject, the Court has stated that “the concept of ‘persons’ is related to the active and passive subjects of the violation and mainly to the latter, that is, the victims”. (Durand and Ugarte case, Preliminary Objections. Judgment of May 28, 1999. Series C No. 50, para. 43.) In the instant case, only the defendant party before the ILO Freedom of Association Committee and the Court is the same, the Panamanian State. The complainant party (the petitioners) is not identical because, before the Freedom of Association Committee, it was SITIRHE and SITINTEL, through the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, and before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Panamanian Human Rights Committee. Nor is their identity as regards the victims, since the Freedom of Association Committee refers to the SITIRHE and SITINTEL workers and trade union leaders who were dismissed in general, without individualizing them specifically. To the contrary, in the application before the Court, the Commission individualizes 270 alleged victims. Furthermore, the alleged victims in the case before the interAmerican system are workers from all the Panamanian State enterprises who were affected by the application of Law 25, and not only from the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources and Electrification and the National Telecommunications Institute, as in the case before the ILO (supra, para. 2.d). 55. Regarding the object, when referring to the concept of “facts”, the Court has established that this corresponds “to the behavior or the event that is a violation of some human right”. (Durand and Ugarte case, Preliminary Objections, supra 54, para. 43). In this case, the Freedom of Association Committee did not hear facts that occurred after their pronouncement; facts, such as the proceedings before the Panamanian Judiciary, that were included in the application before the Court. Moreover, the Court observes that, in the public hearing on preliminary objections of January 27, 1999, Antonio Ducreux Sánchez declared that the complaint before the Freedom of Association Committee only referred to the events of December 1990. 56. There is no identity either as regards the legal grounds, because in the application before the Court, violations of the following articles of the American Convention are alleged: 8 (Right to a Fair Trial); 9 (Freedom from Ex Post Facto Laws); 10 (Right to Compensation); 15 (Right of Assembly); 16 (Freedom of Association) and 25 (Right to Judicial Protection), in relation to Articles 1.1, 2, 33 and 50.2. The claim presented to the Freedom of Association Committee was based on violations of ILO Conventions 87 (Convention concerning Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize) and 98 (Convention concerning the Application of the Principles of the Right to Organize and to Bargain Collectively). Therefore, the object is not the same either; particularly as only the facts concerning the right to freedom of association and workers’ rights in general were examined by the ILO while the violation of a series of rights not included in the claim filed before the Freedom of Association Committee, such as the right to due legal process, was raised before the Court.