9 for the Republic of Nicaragua: Edmundo Castillo Salazar, Agent; Rosenaldo Castro, Advisor; and Bertha Marina Argüello, Advisor. for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Claudio Grossman, Delegate Verónica Gómez, Lawyer; James Anaya, Assistant; María Luisa Acosta, Assistant; and Todd Crider, Assistant. V COMPETENCE 38. Nicaragua has been a State Party to the American Convention since September 25, 1979, and recognized the contentious jurisdiction of the Court on February 12, 1991. Therefore, under the provisions of Article 62(3) of the Convention, the Court is competent to hear the instant case. VI PRELIMINARY OBJECTION: FAILURE TO EXHAUST DOMESTIC REMEDIES 39. The Court proceeds to consider the objection that domestic remedies had not been exhausted, filed by Nicaragua in the case sub judice. 40. In this regard, the State has alleged that the Community failed to exhaust existing domestic remedies because it: a) incurred in a series of omissions and defective procedural actions when contesting the logging concession granted by the Government to the company SOLCARSA; it did not use all the existing jurisdictional remedies and its defective procedural action had a negative influence on the provision of a prompt judicial remedy; and b) made no request for the award of land titles to the competent authorities of the Central Administration, but addressed itself to third party institutions that lacked competence in this area. 41. With regard to its first argument, the State declared that, despite having had administrative and constitutional remedies at its disposal in order to contest the concession, the Community failed to used them at the appropriate procedural moment, thereby acting after the statutory time limit had passed or allowing their right to be precluded. 42. It also added that the Community made an “unclear” petition, thereby failing to comply with “the principles of substantiation of the petition and the violated regulations, contained in the Law of Amparo,” and that it failed to request the