Title: What is the Inter-American Court of Human Rights?
Course: Inter-American Human Rights System - 2nd. Edition > Section: The IAHRS

First, we invite you to watch this video

The Inter-American Court is one of the three regional courts for the protection of human rights, along with the European Court of Human Rights and the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights.

Competence: is the capacity of a Judge or a Court to decide any specific matter under the law.

It is an autonomous judicial institution, i.e., it does not depend on other bodies, and its function is to interpret and apply the American Convention. It also has jurisdiction to review cases of violations of the Convention against Torture and the Protocol of San Salvador.

Unlike the Commission, which was created within the framework of the OAS, the Court was created by the American Convention. It received its first case in 1981.

The IA Court consists of seven judges who are nationals of the Member States of the OAS, elected to serve in their individual capacities from amongst jurists of the highest moral authority and of recognized competence in the field of human rights, possess the qualifications required for the exercise of the highest judicial  functions under the law of the State of which they are nationals or of the State that proposes them as candidates.

The judges live in their countries and meet two or three times a year, either in Costa Rica (the Court's headquarters) or outside its headquarters.

Here you can see where the Court has held sessions.

At front from left to right : Judge, Humberto Antonio Sierra Porto; Judge, Patricio Pazmiño Freire,

Vicepresident; Judge, Elizabeth Odio Benito; President and Judge, Eduardo Vio Grossi.

Behind from left to right: Judge, Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni; Judge, Eduardo Ferrer Mac-Gregor Poisot; and Judge, Ricardo Pérez Manrique.

The IA Court has three main functions:

- A contentious function, which includes the resolution of cases and the mechanism for monitoring the sentences;

- An advisory function; and

- The function of issuing provisional measures.

We will discuss each of these functions in the next modules.