Reflections on the human rights challenges of consolidating democracies: Recent developments in the inter-American system of human rights

Since democracies in the Americas began to consolidate themselves, the improvement in their human rights record is reflected in the petitions and cases that reach the international human rights systems. In the Inter- American Human Rights System (IAS), the diversification of topics is apparent: there are more and new human rights issues at stake, as well as more petitions and new types of claimants bringing them.3 While until the late 1990s, the majority of petitions to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ('the Commission' or IAComHR) dealt with massacres, extrajudicial executions and arbitrary killings occurring during authoritarian regimes, since the early 2000s, issues like political participation, unfair dismissal, rape by public officials and private persons, wire-tapping, and discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation have been brought before the IAS in much greater proportion. This does not mean that transitional justice is not any more an issue in the IAS: in 2010, three cases on amnesty laws were before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ('the Court'or IACtHR), and in 2008 and 2009 several cases on disappearances, massacres and torture that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s were decided against Guatemala and Bolivia.