IACHR

Press Release

Joint Press Release from Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

September 7, 2018

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Washington, D.C. - San José, Costa Rica / Washington, DC—The plenaries of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) met for their annual meeting on September 1, 2018. The two organizations wish to thank the Institute of Legal Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) for its help and support, which made this meeting possible.

The Inter-American Court was represented by the president, Eduardo Ferrer Mac-Gregor, judges Humberto Antonio Sierra Porto, Elizabeth Odio Benito, Raúl Zaffaroni, and L. Patricio Pazmiño Freire, and the court’s secretary, Pablo Saavedra Alessandri, and assistant secretary, Emilia Segares Rodríguez. The vice president, Justice Eduardo Vio Grossi, was unable to attend the meeting for reasons beyond his control. The IACHR was represented by the president, Margarette Macaulay; the first vice president, Esmeralda Arosemena de Troitiño; the second vice president, Luis Ernesto Vargas Silva; commissioners Francisco José Eguiguren Praeli, Joel Hernández García, Antonia Urrejola Noguera, and Flávia Piovesan; the executive secretary, Paulo Abrão, the deputy executive secretary for monitoring, promotion and public policy, María Claudia Pulido, the chief of staff of the executive secretary, Marisol Blanchard Vera; the special rapporteur on economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights, Soledad García Muñoz; the special rapporteur for freedom of expression, Edison Lanza; and support staff from the IACHR Secretariat.

At the meeting, the members of the Court and the Commission discussed the current and future challenges facing the bodies that make up the Inter-American System. Those present put forward their views on the current challenges to processing cases through the Inter-American System and agreed to create a working group of judges, commissioners, and technical staff from both organizations to find structural solutions that guarantee the case system can function effectively.
Likewise, the IA Court and the IACHR finalized details on the second Inter-American Forum on Human Rights, which will take place on December 10 and 11 in Bogotá, Colombia. This public event is open to all users of the Inter-American System and all interested sectors and is jointly organized by the two main bodies of the Inter-American Human Rights System, with support this year from the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic of Colombia.

The two organizations took advantage of the occasion to call upon the OAS Member States to comply with the commitments they took on at the 47th Regular Period of Session, which was held in Cancun, Mexico, where it was agreed that the regular budget granted by the OAS would be doubled within three years (Resolution AG/RES. 2912 (XLVII-O/17). The IA Court and the IACHR wish to mention that, to date, member states have complied with the gradual increase of 33% per year agreed for this year, and trust that states will continue to build on this commitment until the resources assigned to the organizations of the Inter-American Human Rights System have been doubled, the aim of which is to guarantee their basic functioning and to strengthen their operations.

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This press release was drafted jointly by the Secretariat of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and is thus their sole responsibility.

For more information on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, please visit http://www.corteidh.or.cr/index.php/en or write to Secretary Pablo Saavedra Alessandri at [email protected]. To contact the press office, please write to Marta Cabrera Martín at [email protected].

For more information on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, please visit /en/iachr/. To contact the press office, please write to at [email protected].

No. 199/18