6 22. A State, accordingly, may have its international responsibility engaged, in my view, by the simple approval and promulgation of a law in conflict with its conventional international obligations of protection, or by its failure to harmonize its domestic law in order to secure the faithful compliance with such obligations, or by its failure to adopt the legislation needed to comply with these latter. Time has come to give precision to the scope of the legislative obligations of States Parties to human rights treaties. The tempus commisi delicti is, in my understanding, that of the approval and promulgation of a law which, per se, by its existence itself, and its applicability, affects the protected human rights (in the context of a given concrete case, where victims of violations of the protected rights exist), without the need to wait for the subsequent application of that law, generating an additional damage. 23. The State at issue ought to remedy promptly such situation, since failure to do so can constitute a "continuing situation" in violation of human rights (denounced in a concrete case). It is perfectly possible to conceive of a "legislative situation" contrary to the international obligations of a given State (e.g., maintaining a legislation in conflict with the conventional obligations of protection of human rights, or failing to adopt the legislation required to give effect to such obligations in the domestic law). In this case, the tempus commisi delicti would extend so as to cover the whole period in which the national laws remained in conflict with the conventional international obligations of protection, entailing the additional obligation of reparation for the successive damages resulting from such "continuing situation" during the whole period at issue7. 24. It is the objective or "absolute" responsibility8, as from the element of risk, and not the subjective responsibility, seeking to identify fault or culpa, that provides the basis of the duty of prevention of human rights violations. The position appears to me quite clear in respect of the legislative obligations of the States Parties to human rights treaties which, like the American Convention on Human Rights (Articles 1(1) and 2), expressly set forth, along with the specific obligations in relation to each of the protected rights, the general duties to secure respect for those rights and to harmonize the domestic legal order with the international norms of protection. The international responsibility of the States Parties is, in this sense, objective or "absolute", bearing in mind jointly the two general duties, set forth in Articles 1(1) and 2 of the American Convention. 25. In fact, it is extremely difficult to verify a presumed psychological attitude or fault on the part of the complex contemporary State apparatus. How, - to evoke an appropriate example cited by a lucid jurist already in the mid-1950s, - can one determine the mens rea of the national parliamentarian in approving a legislation in conflict with a treaty previously in force? Or in allowing such legislation in conflict with a subsequently ratified treaty to remain in force and unaltered? It would be virtually impossible to do so (i.e., to determine that he acted in a culpable way), which is why it is the thesis of the objective responsibility that provides the 7. In this sense, Roberto Ago, Special Rapporteur, "Seventh Report on State Responsibility", Yearbook of the International Law Commission (1978)-II, Part I, pp. 38, 43 and 52. 8. Ian Brownlie, System of the Law of Nations - State Responsibility - Part I, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1983, p. 43; Ian Brownlie, Principles of Public International Law, 4th. ed., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995 (reprint), p. 439.