4 jurisdiction.15 Respecting this lack of competence, and when ruling on the preliminary objection ratione temporis filed by the State, the Court stated that it was unable to examine the violation of Article 4 in relation to the alleged arbitrary deprivation of life of members of the Moiwana community by State agents, or the violation of Article 5, which could derive from any adverse effects on personal integrity that occurred the day of the events of 1986; that is, it could not rule on the alleged violation of the obligation to respect the right to life and the right to personal integrity that had occurred on November 29, 1986, in Suriname.16 Notwithstanding the above, the Court understood that the events that occurred in 1986 gave rise to the obligation to investigate them, and that this obligation was pending execution when the Court acquired jurisdiction to try the State of Suriname and, thus, ratione temporis, it came within the Court’s jurisdiction.17 2. In my opinion, the obligation to investigate was generated at the time of the massacre. It should not be forgotten that, at that date, Suriname was a member of the Organization of American States and, as a member, it was obliged to respect and guarantee the human rights established in the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, which include, in Article 1, the rights to life, liberty and the security of the person. Thus, the massacre of the Moiwana village did not take place in the absence of norms of the system, which Suriname should have respected. However, the Court was unable to monitor compliance with that obligation because it lacked jurisdiction to do so. Its jurisdiction commenced when Suriname deposited the appropriate instrument, in accordance with Article 62 of the Convention. At that moment, the obligation to investigate was pending, because it is an obligation that is not exhausted when the facts occur.18 That is what the Court decides in paragraph 40 of the judgment. 3. Since the Court decided that the State had the obligation to investigate the facts of the massacre, it should have set out the legal grounds for that obligation, because if these grounds did not exist, neither did the obligation. Paragraph 156 of the judgment failed to mention this. This is essential because, if the obligation to investigate does not exist, the Court cannot maintain that there has been a violation of Articles 8(1) and 25 to the detriment of the members of the Community. Article 8(1) establishes how an investigation should be conducted, when there is an obligation to investigate, and Article 25 establishes the need for a remedy “for protection against acts that violate […] fundamental rights…” 15 The Court encountered a similar problem in the Case of the Serrano-Cruz Sisters, but in that case there was an obstacle that prevented it from declaring that the obligation to investigate subsisted. There, the State had accepted the Court’s contentious jurisdiction with the express reservation that the Court could only and exclusively examine the facts or legal acts occurring after the date of the State’s acceptance of the Court’s jurisdiction or those facts or legal acts whose execution had commenced after that date. See Case of the Serrano-Cruz Sisters. Judgment of November 23, 2004. Series C No. 118, paras. 57 to 96). 16 See paras. 37 to 43. 17 See para. 40. 18 Similarly, the Court indicated in the Tibi case that “[s]ince the date the said Inter-American Convention against Torture entered into force in Ecuador (December 9, 1999), the State has been obliged to comply with the obligations contained in that treaty.” (Cf. Case of Tibi, supra note 5, para. 159)