much so that Article 30 of the Statute, after referring to the annual report and to the
indication of the cases in which the judgments have not been complied with, adds in
the same paragraph that the Court “may also submit to the OAS General Assembly
proposals or recommendations on ways to improve the inter-American system of human
rights, insofar as they concern the work of the Court.” In other words, if the Court
considers that the actual system is not efficient or adequate, what it should do is propose
to the OAS General Assembly any amendments it considers necessary and not alter the
provisions of the Convention and the Statute by means of the Rules of Procedure.
Similarly, it is not appropriate to transform the regulatory mechanism of monitoring
compliance with judgments into a prolongation of the proceedings in which judgment
has already been delivered, or into a new proceeding or, finally, into an instance that,
all things considered, on the one hand provides an excuse for not informing the OAS
General Assembly opportunely about non-compliance with the Court’s judgments and,
on the other, grants the State an extension without stipulating a definitive date for it
to comply with the judgment. This is because, under the said hypothesis, the victims of
human rights violations are placed at a disadvantage by having to continue litigating,
but this time against arguments of a domestic nature that the State normally cites in
order not to comply with the judgment and that obviously were not admissible during
the trial itself;10 in addition, it places the Court itself in a position where, without
having the essential powers to enforce compliance with its judgments, it must resort to
supplicating or to political pressure in order to induce the respective State to honor its
freely and sovereignly-made commitment to comply with them.11 Consequently, the
said mechanism cannot divest the final judgment of its intrinsic value as a “final and
non-appealable judgment,”12 or affect the dignity of the Court’s functions.
With even less reason can prolonging the regulatory mechanism of monitoring
compliance with judgments without opportunely informing the OAS General Assembly
of this non-compliance, as in this case, be justified by the fact that the Court has many
active cases of this type; thus, if it provides this information on one of them, it would
be obliged to do so on most of the others, which could cause major political problems
to the inter-American system as well as implying recognition of the inefficiency of the
judicial human rights system.
And, this situation cannot serve as justification in this regard because, for the time
being, it is more of a political issue, an area that is prohibited to the Court, rather than
a legal one, which, to the contrary, is its particular domain.
IV. Responsibilities
Moreover, it is not appropriate to invoke that situation because, it would infer that the
issue of compliance with judgment is a matter that falls within the Court’s exclusive
responsibility, rather than that of the States; in other words, that the inefficiency of
(b) be considered as a party to the unamended treaty in relation to any party to the treaty not
bound by the amending agreement.”
10
Art. 27 idem: “International law and the observance of treaties
A party may not invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a
treaty. This rule is without prejudice to article 46.”
11
Art. 26 idem: “Pacta sunt servanda".
“Every treaty in force is binding upon the parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith.”
12
Art. 67 of the Convention.
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