OAS States are working on a tenth reform to the IACHR

Jose Jesus Orozco

American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) was ahead of the meeting prepared for this Monday, March 11, in Guayaquil. The signatories of the Pact of San Jose announced to have ready the draft reforms, which advocates the use of procedures and also assured it will not jeopardize the rights of individuals.

In 1959 the commission was created and since then the regulations have been amended nine times. On March 22, during an extraordinary meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS), to approve the tenth reform package, most of the reforms are pressured by the government of Ecuador, whose president, Rafael Correa, remains critical on the entity.

However, last Friday, members of the OAS studied the proposal made by the Commission to carry out its own reform and, with few exceptions, were willing to adopt it permanently. The reforms were first proposed in 2011 by a working group composed of ten countries, which suggested key changes to the functioning of the Commission, as the regulation of the financing of the agency and its Rapporteurs (as the Freedom of Expression) and that the criteria of Chapter IV be modified, since there is a register of the countries that present the most serious rights violations. Other changes include increasing the requirements to grant interim measures.

The president of the Commission, Jose Jesus Orozco, said last Friday that the only change in the precautionary measures is that it will be made public. “The goal is to promote legal certainty, the vehicle for the change would be the publication of the legal basis on which the Commission based its decision. There has always been a reasoned decision; the difference is that now it will be published,” he explained.