III JURISDICTION 13. The Court has jurisdiction to hear this case pursuant to Article 62(3) of the Convention because Costa Rica has been a State Party to the American Convention since April 8, 1970, and accepted the contentious jurisdiction the Court on July 2, 1980. IV PRELIMINARY OBJECTIONS 14. In the case sub judice, the State filed three preliminary objections; these are described and examined below. A. A.1. Preliminary objection concerning the alleged violation of the principle of procedural equality and the right of defense Arguments of the parties and of the Commission 15. The State argued that procedural equality and its right of defense had been violated because it considered that the Commission had substantiated the case improperly. It indicated that the Commission had forwarded the initial petition to the State on December 28, 2011, together with a series of briefs subsequently presented by the petitioner which had modified the initial petition. 16. In the State’s opinion, the existence of numerous expansions of the original petition gave rise to uncertainty as to its purpose. It added that, when requesting a report, the Commission had not advised the State of the aspects on which it required information, and this infringed the right of defense because the Commission had initiated a procedure “without advising […] which aspects it would be examining; […] without indicating whether any of the allegations made [by the alleged victim] related to matters regarding which that organ had competence.” 17. The State indicated that, when forwarding a petition, the Commission should include a minimum of criteria that would allow the State to determine, with the required precision, the aspects that would be examined at an initial stage, such as that of admissibility. It argued that this did not happen in the instant case because the Commission forwarded a petition that evolved over time. It added that the Commission had merely forwarded the documentation accumulated during the initial processing, without any page numbering that would have given some order to the file which, consequently, did not contain an appropriate, express, clear, precise and detailed account of the facts or conducts that were attributed to it. 18. Lastly, it contested the consolidation of the admissibility and merits stages owing to the lack of certainty that existed in relation to the purpose of the litigation, and argued that the State’s position had not been taken into account forcing it to defend itself from numerous different claims over time. 19. The Commission argued that the State had not indicated clearly the allegation or aspect of the petition regarding which it was unable to present a defense. Moreover, it had not demonstrated that its rights had been violated during the processing of the petition, given that the Commission had forwarded the initial letter of complaint presented by the petitioner to the State together with all the documents that the petitioner subsequently sent to the Commission. It therefore considered that the State 5