5
latter,9 -without sufficiently and duly considering a situation that suddenly
causes irreparable damage to a human being (v.g., deprivation of life due to
the State's lack of diligence).’
In other words, the obligations involved are to achieve a given result
and not to act in a given manner, because, otherwise, they would not refer to
compulsory laws and, in addition, could result in impunity” (paras. 5-7 and 912).
14.
Since, so far, the Inter-American Court has neither corrected nor left behind
the incorrect position it recently adopted that obligations arising under the American
Convention (such as State obligations of prevention, investigation and punishment of
perpetrators) are mere obligations of means or conduct, “not to achieve a given
result,” I find myself under a duty to insist on my duly substantiated position in the
hopes of having the Court turn back to its more enlightened line of decisions on the
subject. For this purpose, I then wish to add, in this Dissenting Opinion, certain
additional considerations on the subject, which I will elaborate on below.
15.
When about three decades ago, Roberto Ago, the then rapporteur of the
International Law Commission (ILC) of the United Nations, proposed a distinction
between obligations of conduct and obligations of result, certain members of the ILC
appeared hesitant as to the feasibility of a distinction between both types of
obligations – as noted in the ILC’s Report on the work of its 29th session (1977); after
all, to achieve a given result, the State is required to engage in a given conduct.10 By
setting the classic doctrine on the subject in a new direction, rendering its evolution
somewhat hermetic through the introduction of the aforementioned distinction
between both types of obligations, R. Ago’s construction ended up creating some
degree of conceptual confusion.
16.
To him, obligations of result entailed an initial freedom of the State to freely
choose the means through which it would fulfill such obligation and achieve the result
sought.11 In addition to not being too compelling, such reasoning by R. Ago proved
not to be of much help in the area of the international protection of human rights.
Despite some references to human rights treaties, the essence of R. Ago’s
construction, as developed in his thick, substantial Reports on the International
Responsibility of States (part I of the ILC’s original draft) gave special consideration to
the context of inter-state relations, mainly.
17.
The ILC itself, in the aforementioned Report of 1977, ended up recognizing
that a State Party to a human rights treaty is burdened with obligations of result and
that, upon a failure to comply with such obligations, the State is not allowed to excuse
itself by claiming that it did its best to perform, that it acted as best it could in the
hopes of complying; on the contrary, that State has a duty to achieve the result
expected of it because of the conventional obligations of protection by which it is
bound.12 Conventional obligations of protection embodied in treaties show that
obligations of result (e.g., bringing legislative measures and administrative practices
9
.
Cf. A. Marchesi, Obblighi di Condotta e Obblighi di Risultato..., op. cit. infra n. (26),
pp. 50-55 and 128-135.
10
.
Report reproduced at: Appendix I: Obligations of Result and Obligations of Means, in
I. Brownlie, State Responsibility - Part I, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2001 [reprint], pp. 241276, particularly pp. 243 and 245.
11
.
12
.
Cf. ibid., pp. 255, 257, 259, 261-262 and 274.
Cf. ibid., pp. 270 and 276.