Rafael Correa, President of the Republic, said that Ecuador would not recognize or abide by the restraining order issued by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). His comments were made during a meeting with the media during Tuesday night in Guayaquil. There, Correa said that the Commission has no authority to dictate that type of measures.
According to the Ecuadorian president, the government is not against the measures, provided that they are legally imposed “not for abusive and illegal powers carried out by the IACHR.” Correa said that he’s willing to obey the measures ordered by the Inter-American Human Rights Court (IACHR), which is the legal instrument of the Organization of American States (OAS), the entity that has the power to dictate them to legitimately.
During his intervention Correa insisted on the proposed change of venue of the ISHR to another country in the region and not in the United States. For Correa that the organization’s headquarters be in Washington is “neocolonialism” and considers unreasonable that a country that does not recognize the IACHR, as is the case of the U.S., “finance and pay them to control the rest of countries.”
Juan Pablo Alban, a Human Rights specialist and professor at the University of San Francisco, said that the Commission has the power to issue interim measures in accordance with article 25 of its rules of procedure and the provision 106 of the Charter of the OAS, which says that the IACHR is a protection agency.
