Introduction

The subject assigned to me has thus far generated extremely little activity within the inter-American system for the protection of human rights.[1] At first glance, that is quite surprising since discrimination is as much, if not more, a curse in the Americas as in many other parts of the world. I have therefore asked myself why the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Inter-American Court of Human Rights have decided so few cases on the subject. One reason may be that until relatively recently the most pressing human rights problems in the region concerned the ...