CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE DIEGO GARCÍA-SAYÁN 1. This is the first case that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights hears on the crucial issue of political rights. To the significance with which this circumstance alone endows the case is added its intrinsic importance for the affirmation and protection such rights in situations such as those described therein. 2. Regardless of this case, there is no doubt that the exercise of political rights and the fundamental components of democracy are delicate matters that, in the past and nowadays, have affected vital aspects of the life of the region’s population. Governments emerging from military coups are a thing of the past, but today’s reality reveals a multitude of threats to democracy and to political rights that pose daily challenges that must be confronted in almost al the countries of the region. The Court, with this judgment, strengthens and develops vital aspects of the political rights stipulated in the Convention. For all these reasons, I consider it necessary to emit this concurring opinion that seeks to add other considerations and perspectives to those already included in the judgment, which I support completely. 3. As the judgment truly states, representative democracy is determinant throughout the system of which the American Convention on Human Rights forms part. Indeed, from the start, the Organization of American States (OAS) was explicit in stating that democracy and its promotion is one of the basic purposes of the Organization. Already, in 1948, the OAS Charter proclaimed the fundamental rights of the person, without distinction based on race, nationality religion or sex, and stipulated that respect for human rights was one of the fundamental obligations of States. Among the first objectives of the OAS was the “...promotion and strengthening of representative democracy.” 4. Thus, since the inception of the OAS, democracy and respect for the essential human rights were conceived as interdependent. This connection is present in the preamble to the Charter, in the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and, particularly, in the American Convention on Human Rights. The 1959 Declaration of Santiago described this conceptual unity between human rights and democracy when defining inter-American democratic standards. Subsequently, Resolution 991, “Rights and democracy,” established that the members of the OAS should strengthen their democratic systems through the full respect for human rights. 5. This is the context for the provisions of Article 23 of the Convention on political rights. It is a significant component of a broad normative process for the conceptual affirmation of political rights which, evidently, are not exhausted by the contents of the provisions of the Convention. Based on the grounds and findings set out in the judgment, the Court considers correctly that this is one of the rights violated by the State of Nicaragua in the instant case. The grounds for the violation of political rights in YATAMA v. Nicaragua make it advisable to consider the plentiful body of arguments and opinions that have been developed in the inter-American system over recent decades concerning the exercise of political rights in the affirmation of democracy, one of the essential obligations of the States Parties to the inter-American system. 6. Throughout the 1990s, democratic values were reaffirmed at the global and inter-American levels. Within the inter-American system, important decisions were adopted at the hemispheric Summits and at the OAS General Assemblies designed to strengthen democratic principles, and the first steps were taken to produce what was later, with the Inter-American Democratic Charter, called the “collective