The IACHR is an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States (OAS). Its human rights duties stem from three documents: the OAS Charter, the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, and the American Convention on Human Rights. It is a permanent body, with headquarters in Washington, D.C, and it meets in regular and special sessions several times year.
The other body in the system is the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, headquartered in San José, Costa Rica.
The inter-American system for the protection of human rights emerged with the adoption of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man in April 1948 – the first international human rights instrument of a general nature, predating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by more than six months.
The IACHR was created in 1959.
It held its first meeting in 1960, and it conducted its first on-site visit to inspect the human rights situation in an OAS member state (the Dominican Republic) in 1961.
A major step in the development of the system was taken in 1965, when the Commission was expressly authorized to examine specific cases of human rights violations.
Since that date the IACHR has received thousands of petitions and has processed in excess of 12,000 individual cases.
In 1969, the guiding principles behind the American Declaration were taken, reshaped, and restated in the American Convention on Human Rights.
The Convention defines the human rights that the states parties are required to respect and guarantee, and it also ordered the establishment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
It is currently binding on 24 of the OAS's 35 member states.
The main task of the IACHR is to promote the observance and defense of human rights in the Americas.
In pursuit of this mandate it:
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The IACHR's ranking officers are its seven commissioners.
The commissioners are elected by the OAS General Assembly, for four-year terms, with the possibility of reelection on one occasion, for a maximum period in office of eight years.
They serve in in a personal capacity and are not considered to represent their countries of origin but rather "all the member countries of the Organization" (Art. 43 of the Convention).
The Convention (Art. 42) says that they must "be persons of high moral character and recognized competence in the field of human rights".
No two nationals of the same member state may be commissioners simultaneously (Art. 37), and commissioners are required to refrain from participating in the discussion of cases involving their home countries.
The member states of the OAS, meeting at the OAS General Assembly held in Santiago, Chile, in June 2003, elected the following individuals to serve on the IACHR as of January 2004:
History of the inter-American human rights system
Functions of the Inter-American Commission
How the Commission processes cases
Composition of the Inter-American Commission
Current Commissioners
Future Commissioners
With this result, for the first time ever there will be no national of the United States on the seven-member Commission. The unsuccessful U.S. candidate was Rafael E. Martinez.Past Commissioners
External links