INTRODUCTION

          The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has the honor to submit its report to the General Assembly, in compliance with the provisions of Article 52 f of the Charter of the Organization of American States.

            This report contains five chapters and has been prepared in accordance with Resolution 331 (VIII-0/80) of the General Assembly and Article 63 of the new Regulations of the Commission.

          Chapter I is a brief summary of the Commission’s origin and juridical bases. This chapter also contains a brief account of the Commission’s relationship with other organs of the inter-American system and regional and global institutions of a similar nature during 1986 and 1987.

          Chapter II refers to the activities undertaken by the Commission during the period covered by this report. Emphasis is placed on the Commission’s principal activities, as well as the subjects it dealt with and the most important measures taken during its various sessions. It includes the participation of the Commission in the sixteenth regular session of the General Assembly as well as the resolutions adopted by this organ in relation to the work of the Commission in the field of human rights.

          Chapter III is entitled “Resolutions on Individual Cases.” This chapter contains several resolutions adopted by the Commission regarding specific cases presented to it, which the Commission processed in accordance with the applicable legal provisions.

          In Chapter IV the Commission has included special reports on developments in the human rights situation in Cuba, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua and Suriname—all of which have been the subject of previous Commission reports—in order to examine the measures taken by the various governments to comply with the recommendations that the Commission has made in these earlier reports and to examine developments in the observance of human rights in these countries in the twelve months preceding the approval of the present report.

          Chapter V constitutes a study by the Commission on areas in which the States should institute measures to further the cause of human rights, in accordance with the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man and the American Convention on Human Rights. To this end, the Commission wishes to propose to the General Assembly the adoption of two new instruments—an Additional Protocol to the “Pact of San José”, abolishing the death penalty and an Inter-American Convention to prevent and punish the forced disappearance of persons—that would strengthen the protection, in the Commission’s view, of the most important of all of the human rights, the right to life.

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