videoconference, pursuant to the Court’s Rules of Procedure, on April 1, 2022, during the 147th regular session of the Court. 5 10. Amicus curiae. The Court received a brief from the Semillero de Litigación ante Sistemas Internacionales de Protección de Derechos Humanos (SELIDH) of the Law and Political Sciences Faculty of the University of Antioquía. 6 11. Final written arguments and observations. On April 30, 2022, the representatives presented their final written arguments. On May 2, 2022, the State and the Commission presented their final written arguments and observations, respectively. 12. Deliberation of the case. The Court deliberated on this Judgment in a virtual session on August 31, 2022. III JURISDICTION 13. The Court has jurisdiction to hear the instant case, pursuant to Article 62(3) of the Convention, as Argentina has been a State Party to the American Convention since September 5, 1984, and recognized the contentious jurisdiction of the Court on the same date. IV PRELIMINARY OBJECTIONS 14. The State filed two preliminary objections: a) an objection on the grounds that the alleged victims had not taken part in the proceedings, and b) an objection due to the abstract, hypothetical-conjectural and/or groundless nature of the alleged rights violations. Noting the characteristics of the State’s arguments, the Court will analyze them together. A. Arguments of the State and observations of the Commission and the representatives A.1. The alleged victims did not take part in the proceedings and the representatives had no powers of representation 15. The State asserted that there was no document demonstrating the participation of the alleged victims in the proceedings before the Court, or that they had granted their attorneys powers to represent them. It said the representatives were not, in fact, in contact with the alleged victims. Hence, there was no evidence that Ms. Habbal’s son and daughters wished to continue with the proceedings, nor was any information provided about the state of their lives. 5 The following people took part in the hearing: a) for the Inter-American Commission: Julissa Mantilla Falcón, Marisol Blanchard, Jorge Meza Flores and Paula Rangel; b) for the representatives: Carlos Varela Álvarez and Ignacio Boulin; and c) for the State: Javier A. Salgado, Andrea Pochak, Gabriela Kletzel, María Julia Loreto, and Rodrigo Robles Tristán. The document, signed by Juliana Betancur Vásquez, Alejandro Gómez Restrepo, Yeni Fernanda García Palacio, Daniela Estefanía Cadavid Deossa, Jorge Andrés Pinzón Cabezas, Sebastián Alarcón Ruíz, Gabriel Jaime Roldán Peña and Juan Camilo Carrascal Bula, deals with points of law regarding the indirect and covert discrimination to which, they argue, the alleged victims were subjected, and presents a legal analysis of the different human rights violations alleged in this case. 6 5