8 of the resulting interaction between the international and national legal systems in the current context of protection is to perfect the national legal protection systems, as required by international instruments to safeguard human rights.24 III. Emancipation of the Individual vis-à-vis his or her own State. 26. This is not the first time that this happens. Previously, in the case of the “Five Pensioners” versus Peru (2003), the petitioners and the Commission also followed different lines of reasoning with respect to a certain aspect of their respective pleadings. This is natural, and heartening, as it helps to highlight the different roles of the petitioners (the true substantive applicant party before the Court) and the Commission (as the auxiliary body of the Court in adjudicatory proceedings under the American Convention, and the defender of public interest and guardian of the Convention). 27. In my Concurring Opinion in that case of the “Five Pensioners” (para. 16), I pointed out that this development reflects the necessary prevalence of the entitlement of individuals to all the rights protected by the Convention above all other considerations, as subjects of International Human Rights Law. Said development is also a direct consequence of the step forward taken by the Court since it adopted its current rules of Procedure, the fourth in its history, granting locus standi in judicio to the individual petitioners in all stages of the procedure before the Court. As I argued in my aforementioned Opinion in the case of the “Five Pensioners” (para. 19), and as was corroborated in the adjudicatory proceeding before this Court in the instant case of the Gómez Paquiyauri brothers, “The petitioners themselves are those who, better than anyone else, can assess which rights have presumably been violated. To attempt to restrict this faculty would go against the right of access to justice under the American Convention.” 28. Furthermore, as I have been arguing in recent years, we are in the midst of a historical process of strengthening of the emancipation of the individual vis-à-vis his or her own State. Six years ago, in my Concurring Opinion in the Castillo Petruzzi et al. versus Peru case (Preliminary Objections, 1998) before this Court, I summarized as follows the “qualitative leap” that would take place under the American Convention: “This means to seek to secure, not only the direct representation of the victims or their relatives (locus standi) in the procedure before the Inter-American Court in cases already forwarded to it by the Commission (in all stages of the proceedings and not only in that of reparations25),but rather the right of direct access of individuals before the Court itself (jus standi), so as to bring a case directly before it, as the sole future jurisdictional organ for the settlement of concrete cases under the American Convention. To that end, individuals would do without the Inter-American Commission, which would, nevertheless, retain functions other than the contentious one,26 prerogative of the future permanent Inter-American Court.27 24 . A.A. Cançado Trindade, "Exhaustion of Remedies in International Law and the Role of National Courts", 17 Archiv des Volkerrechts - Tübingen (1977-1978) pp. 333-370; and see, in this same regard, twenty years later, A.A. Cançado Trindade, O Esgotamento dos Recursos Internos no Direito Internacional, 2d. updated ed., Brasilia, Edit. Universidad de Brasilia, 1997, pp. 176-177 and 244-245. 25 . As occurred under the previous (third) Rules of Procedure of the Court, Article 23. 26 . 27 Like those of the undertaking of missions of in loco observation and the preparation of reports. . resources. Enlarged, functioning in chambers, and with considerably greater human and material