34 Salvador has never undervalued the exercise of human rights in grave situations of conflict”; c) In 1982, the year in which the facts allegedly occurred, the State did not have a practice of disappearing children; on the contrary, it applied international humanitarian law. The alleged facts occurred in a “combat zone,” where there were confrontations between two bands in which the civilian population participated and during which many minors were abandoned and found by the opposite side. The Army used to hand the children who were “orphans or separated from their families” to the Salvadoran Red Cross or to the International Committee of the Red Cross for their care and protection. The State’s action “responded to what was appropriate and established under the applicable lex specialis,” which was international humanitarian law. If the Army did intervened and “picked up the two abandoned minors” and handed them to the Salvadoran Red Cross or the ICRC, “the Army’s conduct […] can only be examined with reference to the law applicable during non international armed conflicts and not, by inference, in the terms of the American Convention.” “The population in the Department of Chalatenango, in the zone known by the guerrilla as the Modesto Ramírez Central Front […], was involved with the guerrilla in 1982, either temporarily ceasing to be civilian population or as combatants. In the case of the Serrano Cruz family […] one of its sons was a member of the Front and the family belonged to the ‘masses’”; d) The Court’s jurisdiction to interpret human rights treaties “cannot be extended to humanitarian law treaties”, so that if “the Court hears the case, it would be interpreting the pertinent articles of the 1977 Protocol additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 relating to the protection of victims of non-international armed conflicts”; e) “Unlike the Las Palmeras case, in which the Commission persuaded the Court to rule on violations of humanitarian law, the instant case refers to facts that, per se, correspond to the area of international humanitarian law.” Bearing in mind the Court’s ruling in that case, the Court does not have jurisdiction to determine the compatibility of State acts or laws with the 1949 Geneva Conventions; and f) The facts of this case “should be examined in accordance with the applicable lex specialis, which is international humanitarian law, and this is outside the Court’s jurisdiction.” The Court should declare itself incompetent “to rule on the violations of humanitarian law alleged by the Inter-American Commission or the representatives of the alleged victims.” Arguments of the Commission 109. The Inter-American Commission indicated that the Court is “fully competent to hear and decide on the matter of the instant case,” which calls for the application of the American Convention, ratified by El Salvador on June 23, 1978. It argued that: