CONCURRING OPINION OF JUDGE SERGIO GARCÍA RAMÍREZ IN THE JUDGMENT OF THE INTER-AMERICAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE CASE OF GARCÍA PRIETO (EL SALVADOR) OF NOVEMBER 20, 2007 A) The Duty to Investigate 1. In the judgment issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the Case of García Prieto (El Salvador) of November 20, 2007, which this opinion accompanies, the necessity of carrying forward certain investigative steps has been examined, and which have been found to be incomplete but required in order to establish the truth about certain events that could have effects under the criminal law. 2. The duty to undertake these investigative steps has a double and cyclical source, which is recognized by a State which is a party to the treaty on human rights and recognizes the jurisdiction of the international tribunal in contentious matters: primarily, the treaty itself –the American Convention- and as a consequence of this, and the recognition of jurisdiction, the rulings pronounced by the Court, which is called to interpret and apply the Convention, in its terms and in the terms of the Statute that derives from it. B) Adoption of measures for the fulfillment of orders: the process of national reception 3. It is possible that the fulfillment of this duty to investigate (I will leave for another opportunity the issue of the reach of the investigation and its transcendence as a component of judicial access and punishment, an issue upon which the Court invites reflection in one paragraph) raises issues which originate in the domestic fora: obstacles raised or normative gaps. The Inter-American Tribunal has often ruled, following the orientation of the Law of treaties and the rules on the subject of international responsibility, upon the fulfillment –by the States Parties- of the general dispositions (normative) or particular dispositions (jurisdictional, with a double impact: in the actual case and in the system as a while) of the international order. I will not say more on this subject. 4. There is no doubt about the State’s obligation to adopt the measures of a legislative or other character (Article 2 of the American Convention) necessary for the observance and protection of the rights and liberties included in that instrument. That is why, in this Judgment, conscious of the circumstances that existed and the arguments that could arise from them, it was necessary to state in an emphatic paragraph: “is incumbent upon the States to create norms and adjust their practices as necessary in order to comply with the orders and decisions of the Inter-American Court, if such norms and practices do not yet exist.” The command is found, then, in the international order that the States accept; the solution, with its particularities, is found in the hands (and in the duties) of these States. 5 This expression accentuates, once more, the necessity that the States arrange what is necessary, in their own internal order, with urgent attention, the commitments contracted with the help of the international order, adopted with mandatory force by the same States through their own sovereign decisions. It has