independent candidates are still not allowed to stand for the position of President or to contest Parliamentary and Local Government elections... » (par agraph 84 of the judgment). 11 . The second reason advanced by the Court (the continuing nature of the violation) is in orde r and raises no particular difficulty. How ever , the first reason (the prior ratification of the Charter) is difficult to grasp and creates confusion whe n considered against the specific objection raised by the Respondent State . In fact, whereas the objection by the Respondent State is based, as far as it was conc erned, on the date of entry into force of the Protocol to establish the Court, the Court's response is to invoke the date of entry into force of the Charter which was not an issu e for the Respondent State . And one does not quite see wha t the Court draws as conc lusion from the date of entry into force of the Charter, regarding the Respondent State 's argument of non-retroactivity of the Protocol. 12. In my opinion, in orde r to fully address the argu ment raised by the 2nd Applicant, the Court ought to have been unequivocal on this point and should have indicated that though the Respondent State was already boun d by the Charter, the Court lacked temporal jurisdiction with respect to it as long as the Protocol conferring jurisdiction on it was yet to beco me operational (unless of course the argument of the alleged continuing violation is invoked) . That clarification is all the more necessary as, in regard to the application of the principle of the non-retroactiv ity of treaties, the 2nd Applicant seems to be making a distinction between treaties of a normative nature and those of an institutional nature (supra, paragraph 9). 13. Such distinction however- which seems to suggest that only the date of entry into force of treaties guaranteeing substantial right s is relevant (as opposed to treaties setting up monitoring institutions)-, is not grou nded anywhere in international law. Indeed, to take the instant case as an example, even though the Protocol establishes an institutional mechanism for the protection of substantial rights guaranteed under the Charter, it still remains « a treaty » within the mea ning of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 23 May 1969 . Article 2. 1 a) of this Convention provides that « 'treaty' means an international agreement conc luded between States in written form and governed by international law, whether emb odied in a single instrument or two or more related instruments and whatever its part icular designation »(italics added). As can be seen , on the one hand , any internatio nal agreement in written form between States can be considered as a treaty regardles s of whether they set substantive norms or establish institutional mechanisms ; on the othe r, its name is of no consequence. 14. Given that the Protocol establishing the Cou rt is a treaty within the meaning of the Vienna Convention, all provisions of the conv ention are therefore applicable to it. The relevant provision applicable to the issue unde r consideration is Article 28 which deals with the principle of non-retroactivity of treaties as follows: « Unless a different intention