3 has not yet had the opportunity to fully broach the latter issue itself; neither has it been able to rule on the meaning of the so-called progressive development of economic, social and cultural rights provided for in Article 26 of the Convention and embodied in the Protocol of San Salvador. It is probable that the Court will be able to examine this very relevant issue in the future. There will therefore be an opportunity to underscore once more the hierarchy of those rights, which do not rank lower than civil and political rights. Strictly speaking, both categories are mutually complementary and, as a whole, constitute the “basic statute” of the individual today. The State, committed to respecting civil and political rights, unconditionally and promptly, should make a greater effort to ensure the prompt and complete effectiveness of economic, social and cultural rights, using the available recourses and avoiding setbacks that would diminish this “basic statute.” This case has not allowed the Court to make progress on such a relevant issue for the reasons set forth at the end of chapter IX of the judgment. However, there are some considerations formulated briefly therein, that should be emphasized. One of these is the explicit statement made by the Court that “economic, social and cultural rights have both an individual and a collective dimension.” I understand that this individual dimension also translates into an individual ownership: of juridical interest and of a corresponding right that may be shared, of course, with other members of a population or one sector of this. I consider that the issue is not reduced to the mere existence of a State duty that should orient its tasks as established by this obligation, considering individuals as mere witnesses waiting for the State to comply with its obligation under the Convention. The Convention is a body of rules on human rights precisely, and not just on general State obligations. The existence of an individual dimension to the rights supports the so-called “justiciable nature” of the latter, which has advanced at the national level and has a broad horizon at the international level. Furthermore, the Court indicated in the judgment to which this opinion corresponds that the progressive development of the rights referred to – a widely debated issue – should be measured “in function of the growing coverage of economic, social and cultural rights in general, and of the right to social security and to a pension in particular, of the entire population, bearing in mind the imperatives of social equity.” Based on this consideration, the Court will evaluate compliance with the State’s obligation and the existence of the individual right, and can decide the specific dispute before it. When considering that, in view of its particularities, the instant case would not adequately sustain a consideration of this nature, the Court did point out, on the one hand, the relationship between the progressive development of the said rights and, on the other hand, the projection that this has “on the entire population” and also the ingredient of “social equity” which should characterize this progressive development. In view of the limits that the Court itself established to its ruling in function of the characteristics of the case sub judice, I do not consider it appropriate to go further in this concurring opinion. The topic evidently suggests many additional considerations that would entail the development of the inter-American case law on one of the most topical and transcendent issues in the human rights system in our region. March 5, 2003