facts that are in dispute correspond to a typical situation of armed conflict, because the Colombian Army was fighting the FARC guerrilla about 500 meters from the village of Santo Domingo. Consequently, the State argued that the eventual violations and responsibilities that could be derived from them could not be determined by the Court, because the latter does not have competence to make the type of declarations that relate to the application of international humanitarian law, because “war law” does not fall within its competences.12 17. Furthermore, the State asked that two issues described by the Commission in the brief submitting the case be excluded from the considerations of the Court: namely, the attribution of State responsibility for acts of private individuals in coordination with the Armed Forces, and the obligation to investigate human rights violations for which senior commanders were responsible. In this regard, it cited Article 35(1)(f) of the Court’s Rules of Procedure. On this point, the State argued that when the Commission raises an issue and indicates that it relates to inter-American public order, it is required to substantiate and provide grounds for this, not as a simple human rights violation in the specific case, but from the perspective of special international legal frameworks for the protection of human rights. 18. Subsidiarily, the State asked the Court that, should it not admit the preliminary objection filed, it admit it partially, so that, in its judgment on merits, it could not make any rulings or condemnation in relation to the presumed violation of articles of international humanitarian law, and that its decision would be made exclusively in relation to the presumed violation of the articles of the Convention. 19. The Commission alleged that the State’s argument based on the context of armed conflict as determining the competence of the organs of the inter-American system to hear a case was inconsistent with the provisions of the American Convention – which does not establish limitations to the competence of the Commission and of the Court to hear cases only in “situations of peace” and, to the contrary, covers emergency situations in its Article 27 – and with the consistent practice of the Court in the exercise of its contentious competence. Regarding the subsidiary claim of the State, the Commission underscored that, in its Merits Report, it had not established any violation of norms of international humanitarian law or the State’s international responsibility in relation to the Geneva Conventions. Thus, it observed that the exercise carried out by the Commission in the said report consisted in establishing the violations of the American Convention and declaring the State’s international responsibility for such violations, taking into account, to the extent pertinent according to the nature of the said violations, some principles of international humanitarian law that were useful and provided guidance to establish the scope of the State’s material competence and is inadmissible because, among other reasons, it ignores the restriction established by the Convention. Supranational organizations and regulations are created based on State sovereignty and, likewise, it is based on the principle of consent that the subjects of international law establish juridical prescriptions and determine the competences of the organs that interpret and apply them. Thus, it is inadmissible that international organs require more of the States than the latter have accepted. Furthermore, if it hears the facts of the instant case, the Inter-American Court will not be using the norms of international humanitarian law as interpretation criteria, but will almost be deciding questions related to its violation by indirect means. In this way, it will be disregarding the principles of the acceptance and transfer of competence that the Colombian State has granted to the Court and the Commission. In addition, it will be assuming competences that correspond to Colombia’s domestic courts, regarding which Colombia has not made a transfer to the Court. Cf. Answering brief (merits file, tome 2, folios 351 to 362). 12 It argued that human rights law should be interpreted in light of the principles of humanitarian law, owing to the implications of the state of emergency on the constitution and scope of some basic guarantees; however, in the hypothesis of an armed conflict, international humanitarian law becomes lex specialis. “In brief, even though the two are parallel and concurrent protection mechanisms, based on its specialization in the matter, international humanitarian law is composed of principles and mechanisms that are much more appropriate in the hypothesis of armed conflict than the mandates of international human rights law. Thus, the death of or injury to a person may relate to humanitarian law or be considered a violation of the right to life. The way in which the sphere of competence is decided in relation to a fact is determined precisely by the context. If the death occurred in an armed conflict, then the case should be analyzed in light of international humanitarian law. To the contrary, human rights law will apply. However, considering that the death of a person in the context of an armed conflict affects articles of human rights law leads to an overlapping of competences” (merits file, tome 2, folios 355 and 356). ‐ 9 ‐