The Role of Country Reports in the Inter-American System of Human Rights

Abstract

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, one of the organs of the inter-American system for the promotion and protection of human rights, has a variety of powers with which it carries out its function. This article deals with one of these powers that results in the issuance by the Commission of reports containing an examination of the general situation of human rights in a country. The article gives a brief description of the Commission's various powers and describes the development, out of the Commission's practice, of the very important procedure to prepare and publish country reports. The remarkable flexibility of this procedure is examined in the light of the contents of many reports produced by the Commission, and particularly of the 1994 Report on El Salvador. The reaction of the OAS political organs to the country reports is also examined, as well as a modality of country reports incorporated in the Commission's Annual Reports, which purport to monitor in a shorter manner the situation of human rights in some countries.