2 5. First, in my opinion, the requirement of the prior exhaustion of domestic remedies is not applicable in requests to the Court for provisional protection measures. This requirement is a condition for the admissibility of petitions to the Commission as regards the merits (and possible reparations) of a specific case. Moreover, the provisional protection measures have a brief procedure, in keeping with the nature of this preventive and protective juridical mechanism, and because it in no way prejudges the merits of the case. 6. Second, I consider that there is no requirement for the Commission’s precautionary measures to be exhausted before recourse can be had to the InterAmerican Court to request provisional protection measures and I expressly indicated this in my concurring opinion to a recent Order of the Court on provisional protection measures.5 Moreover, the Commission’s precautionary measures are based on Rules of Procedure rather than on the Convention and cannot delay – at times indefinitely – the application of the Court’s provisional protection measures, which are Convention-based. 7. As I added in the above-mentioned concurring opinion, “in all circumstances, the imperatives of protection should have primacy over apparent institutional rivalries,” particularly in the midst of situations of “chronic violence.”6 The Commission’s insistence in its practice with regard to prior precautionary measures may, in some case, have negative consequences for the potential victims and create one more obstacle for them. In certain cases, it can constitute a denial of justice at the international level. 8. Third, in cases in which the Commission denies precautionary measures, this decision should be duly justified. The decisions of the Commission and the Court concerning both precautionary and provisional measures, respectively, should always be motivated, as a guarantee of respect for the adversary principle – which is a general principle of law – so that the petitioners have certainty that the matter they submitted has been duly and carefully considered by the international instance, and so that the meaning of the decision taken by the latter is clear7 (especially, in an alleged situation of extreme gravity and urgency with the presumed probability of irreparable damage to persons). 9. A decision by the Commission that denies precautionary measures must necessarily be duly justified always. Moreover, an additional negative by the Commission to request the Court to order provisional measures, also without justification, legitimizes the potential victims, as subjects of international human rights law, to resort to the Court to seek the granting of these provisional measures; otherwise, there could be a denial of justice at the international level. . Cf. Inter-American Court of Human Rights [ICourtHR], Order of November 17, 2005, in the Children Deprived of Liberty in the “Complexo do Tatuapé” of FEBEM v. Brazil, concurring opinion of Judge A.A. Cançado Trindade, para. 3. 5 . 6 Ibid., para. 5. . Cf. [Several authors] Le principe du contradictoire devant les juridictions internationales (eds. H. Ruiz Fabri and J.-M. Sorel), Paris, Pédone, 2004, pp. 14, 33, 81, 86, 118 and 168. 7