166. The Court finds that, in addition to being time-barred and contrary to the principle of
estoppel, the State’s argument is inconsistent with what it affirmed during the processing of the
case before the Commission and in its answering brief before the Court: that CONARE received,
processed and decided the “asylum request” presented by Mr. Pacheco Osco through CEBUNHCR. The State itself provided the said “minutes of the meeting” of CONARE as evidence of
this,231 which show that the State had acknowledged that it had received and processed this
request in which, incidentally, CEB-UNHCR had noted that they already had refugee status in
Chile. In other words, even if it was possible “to infer reasonably” the State’s hypothesis that
this communication “was a request for asylum before the UNHCR and not really before Bolivia”
and that “the State had merely been informed,” the fact that is recorded in the minutes is that,
“the meeting having been called to order,” CONARE “then made an analysis of the cases of
applicants for asylum as well as of other issues” and indicated that, “by fax, the CEB-UNHCR
project [had] sent the request for asylum of the Peruvian citizens Rumualdo Juan Pacheco Osco
and his wife Fredesvinda Tineo Godos.” When sending a “certified copy” of the minutes as an
annex to its answering brief, the State indicated that this “establishes that CONARE discussed
other cases and other issues, in addition to the request for asylum of Rumaldo Juan Pacheco
Osco; in other words, this meeting already had an agenda before the request for asylum filed by
this family. That is to say, the evidence is clear as regards the fact that CONARE took note of
and processed, in a meeting, the communication of CEB-UNHCR as a “request for asylum”
without granting a hearing to the members of the Pacheco Tineo family. Furthermore, there is
no record that they received due notification of this decision.
167. In addition, contrary to the State’s arguments, the said request was not rejected because
it failed to comply with certain formal requirements indicated in the UNHCR manual, but because
CONARE affirmed that “the circumstances that justified their asylum in Bolivia had ceased,”
because they had made a statement on voluntary repatriation in March 1998. In the opinion of
this organ, this constituted “a tacit renunciation of their refugee status” in Bolivia, and it
considered that, “since the applicants had returned to Peru, evidently the circumstances that
justified their asylum in Bolivia had ceased.” In other words, CONARE was aware of the request,
and decided that it would not be “considered.”
168. In any case, it is not incumbent on the Court to evaluate whether or not the request for
refugee status complied with certain formal requirements, in accordance with national or
international normative or procedural standards, because it was the responsibility of the
domestic authorities, in this case CONARE, to have made this evaluation at the appropriate
time. In addition, even in that hypothesis, when presented with a request for asylum, the
authorities had the obligation to provide guidance, and should have indicated the procedure to
be followed, based on the specific difficulties or needs of the applicant (supra para. 159).
169. The State argued that the presumed victims failed to prove that their life or personal
liberty was in danger of being violated, because that same year, 2001, they had returned to
Peru of their own free will before entering Bolivia, which revealed their intention of availing
themselves of the protection of their country of origin and that this danger did not exist, so that
it was not in order to grant them refugee status. The State also argued that there were
sufficient reasons to apply exclusion clause “1.F.b)” of the 1951 Convention against Mr. Pacheco
and Mrs. Tineo because “they were being prosecuted for terrorism and sought by Interpol.”232
were well aware of the national and international norms on the rights and obligations of refugees, so that, if they had
wanted to make a formal request for asylum to CONARE, it can be inferred that they would have been capable of doing
so adequately and appropriately,” especially if they were assisted by UNHCR.
231
Moreover, with its answering brief, the State sent a “certified copy” of the minutes of the CONARE meeting,
with a “true copy of the original filed in the Secretariat’s archives,” which is more extensive, but identical in content to
the document that was provided by the Commission and admitted by this Court (evidence file, folio 1001 and 1002).
232
The State argued that the Court “should analyze specifically, and give emphasis to the fact that, during the
period when these events occurred, acts of terrorism were being carried out in Peru, and it is normal under these
56
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