Within the current Inter-American Court docket of Human Rights judgment on Preliminary Objections of August 21, 2025, within the Case of Chirinos Salamanca et al. Vs. Venezuela, the Court docket dismissed the preliminary objection relating to the Court docket’s lack of jurisdiction ratione voluntatis and ratione temporis raised by the State of Venezuela. With vital implications for the Court docket’s jurisdiction on this case and in different circumstances associated to Venezuela, the IACtHR concluded that the American Conference on Human Rights (ACHR) stays in drive for the State since its preliminary act of ratification on August 9, 1977.
The designation of Juan Guaidó as “Interim President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela” in early 2019 by the Venezuelan Nationwide Meeting, in opposition to the federal government of Nicolás Maduro, created a conflictual situation of worldwide representational duality for Venezuela throughout varied jurisdictional spheres (for background on the battle and the regional response, see on this weblog right here and right here). The OAS, from the outset, didn’t acknowledge the legitimacy of Nicolás Maduro’s mandate following the electoral means of Might 20, 2018; it had highlighted the constitutional authority of the Venezuelan Nationwide Meeting and had accepted the appointment of the Everlasting Consultant designated by the Venezuelan Nationwide Meeting.
The place of the IACtHR previous to this judgment was profoundly unsure and included no few parts of confusion that will benefit separate consideration. A pertinent query is whether or not the Court docket’s recognition in varied prior circumstances of the validity of the 2012 denunciation, executed on the time below the presidency of Hugo Chávez, may have any implication as res judicata. The validity of this denunciation was additionally acknowledged on the Court docket’s web site and in its annual reviews since 2019. In a 2023 interview, IACtHR Decide Patricia Pérez Goldberg acknowledged that the States Events to the Conference numbered 24 and, of those, 21 acknowledged the contentious jurisdiction of the IACtHR. This quantity was solely attainable if Venezuela was thought-about a State Get together.
When it had the chance, the IACtHR’s perspective was evasive relating to saying on its temporal competence within the case of Venezuela for info occurring subsequent to the 2012 denunciation (Case of Revilla Soto Vs. Venezuela, para. 27). On the digital public listening to of April 2021 on the Request for an Advisory Opinion on Differentiated Approaches, the IACtHR accepted the looks of representatives designated by Juan Guaidó as a part of the Everlasting Diplomatic Mission to the OAS of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Following a comment by Decide Patricio Pazmiño, then Vice-President of the IACtHR, on the impropriety of this acceptance, the President of the Court docket, Elizabeth Odio Benito, clarified that “the Illustration of the Everlasting Mission to the OAS is acknowledged as such by the OAS they usually appeared in that capability.”
In any occasion, this judgment closes an vital and deeply regarding chapter within the Inter-American system. This publish will spotlight some avenues the IACtHR may have thought-about to resolve this dispute and the restrictions of a few of them. The Court docket’s try at a systemic method to resolve the query of the ACHR’s validity for Venezuela within the face of the problem posed by two authorities disputing worldwide illustration is, nonetheless, weighed positively. Nevertheless, it’s also applicable to notice the restrictions within the IACtHR’s reasoning in finishing this method, which might have additional consolidated its place.
The attainable approaches accessible to the IACtHR
The primary downside for the IACtHR on this Chirinos case, which entails info subsequent to September 10, 2013, was to qualify the validity of the act of ratification carried out by the “Interim” President of Venezuela on July 31, 2019. This is able to decide whether or not Venezuela continued to be a State Get together to the ACHR by figuring out the validity or invalidity of the acts earlier than the treaty depositary.
A number of interpretative approaches and options existed, supported by precedents from different jurisdictions and analogous disputes regarding Venezuela (see right here, and on this weblog right here and right here). Resorting to standards equivalent to “efficient management” or “democratic legitimacy” (with the previous usually taking priority) invariably raised issues relating to the potential inadmissibility of a global tribunal overstepping its jurisdiction—that’s, assuming political powers extraneous to the judicial operate, equivalent to figuring out the “legit authorities” of a State. It’s evident that the IACtHR, like some other worldwide tribunal with out expressly acknowledged competence for this, can’t resolve based mostly completely on these standards which state authority has the capability for the worldwide illustration of a State.
Neither is it advisable in these circumstances to resort to a quantitative criterion of the recognitions granted to every disputing authority. Francisco J. Quintana and Justina Uriburu have not too long ago rightly highlighted that “the Court docket understates the diploma of contestation surrounding the OAS Everlasting Council and Normal Meeting resolutions on which it grounds its resolution.” And it’s true that in no case have been the resolutions adopted unanimously in each organs. In reality, within the vote on decision CP/RES. 1124 (2217/19) of the Everlasting Council, a number of States (the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, El Salvador, Mexico, Bolivia, Uruguay, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Guyana, Dominica, Suriname, Barbados) famous the peculiarity of this truth, which some interpreted because the “recognition” of a authorities, exceeding the competences of this organ.
In any case, resorting to a depend of recognitions of every disputing authority, whether or not on the regional stage or by the worldwide group, has vital probative worth, however doesn’t appear to be probably the most appropriate criterion, in itself, to be determinative within the decision of those circumstances earlier than worldwide tribunals (a dialogue of this in Talmon, 134, and in my very own ebook, p.196). In a majority of these conditions, probably the most helpful method is to imagine an institutional perspective, which can also be highlighted by Francisco J. Quintana and Justina Uriburu: whether or not certainly the popularity of the legitimacy of an authority or its illustration has been accepted by the related political organ of the worldwide group.
One of many least problematic avenues—as if making use of a type of one voice doctrine—consisted of following the mannequin utilized by the Worldwide Legal Court docket (ICC) when it thought-about the deposit of the instrument of accession accepted by the United Nations Secretary-Normal to find out whether or not Palestine might be thought-about a State below Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute (para. 99). The ICC declined to look at “the result of the accession process,” that’s, the validity of Palestine’s accession to the Rome Statute. In attributing decisive weight to the deposit, the ICC took under consideration, inter alia, a apply whereby the depositary, within the train of its capabilities, follows the dedication of the United Nations Normal Meeting on whether or not a selected entity is a State (para. 96). This technique of resolving the difficulty was enticing and impressed former Lawyer Normal to Juan Guaidó, José Ignacio Hernández, to argue that the selections to just accept the deposit of the 2019 devices of ratification, following the determinations of the OAS’s political organs, “bind the Court docket” relating to Venezuela’s standing vis-à-vis the ACHR (p. 344).
Bearing in mind initially {that a} attainable parallel with the answer discovered by the ICC in that case clashed with the absence of an identical apply inside the OAS framework to provide comparable weight to the deposit made by the OAS Secretary Normal, within the amicus curiae temporary I submitted to the IACHR on this very case, which was subsequently revealed (see right here), I proposed a broader method to the difficulty. A perspective that will consider all parts or conditions with potential probative worth in figuring out the “legit” authority in an built-in method.
For this, it was essential to make clear an vital level. When the IACtHR decides by itself jurisdiction, the political selections of the OAS and the next deposit of a treaty ratification couldn’t represent binding or necessary acts for the IACtHR. The ACHR was born inside the OAS, and the functioning of the IACtHR takes place inside the sphere of this identical group (election of judges, approval of its Statute, accountability by means of annual reviews, and so on.). However the Court docket is an “autonomous judicial establishment” and “like all organ with jurisdictional competences, has the inherent energy to find out the scope of its personal competence (compétence de la compétence/Kompetenz-Kompetenz)” (Constitutional Court docket v. Peru. Competence. Judgment of September 24, 1999, para. 31).
The absence of provisions relating to the scope or authorized results of the deposit within the ACHR itself invited an evaluation of the depositary’s capabilities in mild of the Vienna Conference on the Regulation of Treaties (VCLT). The prevailing doctrinal place, when analyzing Articles 76 and 77 of the VCLT, is that the capabilities of the depositary are administrative in nature, devoid of “adjudicative powers” and with out their acts having binding drive for States (Mark E. Villiger, 2009, p. 940-943). If any difficulties come up in inspecting these acts, it isn’t the depositary’s position to find out their validity however quite that of the States Events. The ICC notably noticed in Choice on the ‘Prosecution request pursuant to article 19(3) for a ruling on the Court docket’s territorial jurisdiction in Palestine’, that the depositary has “accountability over administrative issues linked to the involved treaty” and that “the transmittal of a depositary notification by the United Nations Secretary-Normal doesn’t, as such, render an entity a State Get together to the Statute” (para. 96).
In my consideration, the answer to this controversy needed to be discovered inside the frameworks of the singularities of a regional human rights safety system. A considerably comparable precedent, mutatis mutandis, which sought an answer basically inside the frameworks of its personal human rights system, may be discovered within the matter of Loizidou v. Turkey, 1995 from the European Court docket of Human Rights (ECtHR) (para. 40), which analyzed the standing of the Authorities of Cyprus in its case in opposition to Turkey: an answer that appeals to the constant apply of states and different organs inside the frameworks of the system wherein the human rights courtroom is embedded.
On this context, and tailored to the case in query regarding Venezuela, a strongly defensible place for the Court docket consisted of making an allowance for a set of things: the selections of the political organs on the dedication of the State’s legit consultant within the OAS on the time the deposit happens (Everlasting Council and Normal Meeting); the actions of different organs of the Inter-American system (together with the Secretary Normal as depositary of different treaties); and the apply adopted inside the identical system by different States in direction of the identical authorities, amongst different components. In synthesis, it required analyzing the deposit act and its personal course of inside the frameworks of the practices and ideas governing the Inter-American system.
The constraints of the systemic method employed by the Court docket
The Court docket’s judgment, with out contesting any of those points, assumes a systemic logic, at the very least to the extent that it excludes a particularly formalistic examination—within the type of the ICC—and incorporates vital parts of the Inter-American system past the deposit act. The reasoning is conditioned by an institutional method—i.e., by the place adopted by the OAS political organs on the legitimacy of the state authorities in Venezuela—however it at the very least expressly acknowledges the necessity to analyze the validity of the deposit of the instrument of ratification additionally with the practices and ideas of the Inter-American system, and based mostly on additionally ascertaining the legitimacy of some inside procedures in Venezuela. It’s on this sense that one can learn the Court docket’s recognition that “the motion of the Depositary, the institutional conduct of the OAS organs, and the relevant norms have to be analyzed and interpreted in mild of the ideas governing the Inter-American System of Human Rights, particularly, the effectiveness of the safety mechanism, the character of human rights treaties, their collective implementation, and the professional persona precept” (para. 50).
On this level, the IACtHR notes that the deposit made by Juan Guaidó falls inside a “line of coherence” with the selections adopted by the OAS organs—inside the frameworks of the duty of collective assure—and carried out by an authority beforehand enabled to rejoice treaties with different States of the system, together with multilateral treaties, and likewise to carry out varied acts associated to Inter-American treaties, whose depositary was the OAS Normal Secretariat, in addition to credentials for its representatives (paras. 48-49). Equally, it undertakes to investigate the inner Venezuelan legislative course of relating to the authorized impact of the act of ratification. Though it was not taken under consideration to conclude on the validity of the deposit act carried out by the “Interim” President of Venezuela on July 31, 2019, in compliance with the mandate of the Nationwide Meeting (para. 68), the Court docket additionally contrasted the requirements referring to acts of denunciation of the American Conference, pursuant to Advisory Opinion OC-26/20, with the institutional context wherein the choice to denounce was adopted by the Venezuelan State in 2012.
It’s true that the judgment’s argumentation falls in need of offering a coherent clarification of a really systemic method incorporating the apply of all the Inter-American system. For instance, it might have been fascinating for it to spotlight the apply of different organs of the Inter-American system, such because the Inter-American Fee, in varied issues relating to info subsequent to the 2019 ratification, in addition to examples from the OAS Normal Secretariat itself relating to treaties such because the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Help (TIAR), the place the Ministry of Overseas Affairs of Brazil is the depositary of the unique instrument, and the OAS Normal Secretariat is the depositary of ratifications, which data the validity of the deposit of devices by the federal government of Juan Guaidó on August 6, 2019.
Conclusions
Regardless that the IACtHR doesn’t dedicate even a number of traces to clarifying this, this can be a resolution the place the competence of the IACtHR have to be understood as having a purposeful character and restricted to guaranteeing the train of its personal jurisdiction. It shouldn’t be learn as assuming political powers of “recognizing authorities as governments of a State.” It was apparent that, to qualify the validity of the act of ratification carried out by one authority disputing worldwide illustration with one other, it needed to conduct a world examination inside the total regional system, which basically included making an allowance for the place of the OAS political organs on the legitimacy or lack thereof of a state authority. In a human rights safety system the place the jurisprudence of the IACtHR more and more blurs the boundary between state sovereignty and obligations relating to the safety of democracy and respect for human rights, this new method to disputes over the legitimacy of a State’s worldwide illustration is coherent.
