INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights was established in 1979 as ‘an autonomous judicial institution’ of the Organization of American States (‘OAS’), charged with applying and interpreting the American Convention on Human Rights, the principal human rights treaty of the region. With its seat in San José, Costa Rica, it is composed of seven part-time, independent judges nominated in their individual capacity by the States parties to the Convention and elected by secret ballot for a renewable six-year term by an absolute majority vote in the OAS General Assembly. The Court's elected judges must be jurists of the ‘highest moral authority’, of recognised competence in the field of human rights, and possess the qualifications required for the exercise of the highest judicial functions in conformity with the law of the State of which they are nationals or that proposes them as candidates.

As a ‘judicial institution’, the Inter-American Court has both contentious and advisory functions, the jurisdictional boundaries of which it closely guards. Since its inception, the Court has used both functions broadly. It has adopted nineteen advisory opinions since 1982, and adjudicated the various procedural stages (admissibility, merits, reparations, interpretation, compliance) of over seventy individual cases since its first, the renowned Velásquez Rodríguez case, was decided in 1987. Under its contentious function, the Court's judgments on liability and reparations, as well as its issuance of provisional measures, are final and not subject to appeal.