Speaking with a conscience.

• Author: Padilla, David
• Position: Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

In the wake of World War II, statesmen in the Western Hemisphere focused on how to avoid a repetition of two evils that threatened the world, particularly the West: another totalitarian movement and human rights violations on a massive scale.

In 1948 the Organization of American States was born to provide a forum for debate among the countries of the Hemisphere, to establish a mutual defense alliance (via the Rio Treaty), and to confront the challenge of development. At the same time the American republics - which did not yet include the soon to be independent British and Dutch Colonies of the West Indies - adopted the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, at once a proclamation, a resolution and a detailed list of economic, social and cultural rights and civil and political liberties. This Declaration served as the basis for a subsequent multi-lateral treaty, the American Convention on Human Rights. (The American Declaration antedated the United Nations sponsored Universal Declaration of Human Rights by some six months.)

Years passed before the OAS member states finally created an international machinery for monitoring, reporting, and ultimately litigating these rights against states whose agents committed human rights violations. In 1959, the Fifth Meeting of Consultation of Foreign Ministers created the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and a year later its statute was adopted and the first seven members were elected and installed by the OAS General Assembly.

Over the years, the Commission has been graced by some of the most eminent jurists and diplomats of the Americas. Novelist, educator and ex-President of Venezuela, Romulo Gallegos, served as its first chairman. Since its inception, 39 members from 16 different member states have served on the Commission. Although nominated by Governments (not necessarily their own), once elected by the General Assembly to four-year terms (renewable once), they serve in their individual capacities, recusing themselves when matters affecting their own countries are considered.

In its earlier years, despite its meager powers, the Commission found ways to bring attention to some of the more glaring human rights problems of the 1960s. For example, in 1961 the Commission sent a delegation to Miami to interview Cuban exiles and in 1965 after a coup in the Dominican Republic, the Commission dispatched delegations to visit jails, interview POWs, and secure safe and conducts in that...