NGOs under European Convention on Human Rights / Tymofeyeva

2.8 Right to an effective remedy (Article 13) Article 13 – Right to an effective remedy

Everyone whose rights and freedoms as set forth in this Convention are violated shall have an effective remedy before a national authority notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity. 2.8.1 General observations The right to an effective remedy 1011 is guaranteed to everybody in respect of the rights and freedoms as set forth in the Convention. When examining Article 13 of the Convention, it is important to notice that this Article is applicable only to persons who had ‘an arguable claim’. It means that if an applicant alleges, for instance, a denial of a right to institute criminal proceedings against a third party, the Court will not find a violation of Article 13 of the Convention, 1012 no matter how well founded was the claim, because no Convention right is implicated by it. 1013 Nevertheless, application of the right to effective remedy does not depend directly on a breach of another right under the Convention. It is sufficient just to have an arguable right guaranteed by any other Article of the Convention. In some cases, when the Court has found that there was not a breach of a particular Article, it did not prevent the applicant’s complaint under Article 13 of the Convention from being ‘arguable’ for the purposes of this provision. 1014 The case-law of the Court does not contain any exact definition of the notion of arguability. Such a concept must be determined in light of the particular facts and the nature of the legal issue or issues raised. Then the Court must determine whether each individual claim of a violation forming the basis of a complaint under Article 13 was arguable and, if so, whether the requirements of this legal norm were met in relation thereto. 1015 Therefore, it is difficult to set forth precise limits of the rights of Article 34 NGOs within the meaning of the Convention. As to Article 34 NGOs, it is clear that the notion of an arguable claim is also limited by the nature of legal persons, which for the moment cannot complain, for example, of a violation of their right to life or the right not to be tortured. Consequently, they may not allege a breach of Article 13 in conjunction with Articles 2 or 3 of the Convention. The same is true for the other provisions of the Convention, which are not applicable to legal entities. However, as shown in Centre for Legal Resources on behalf of Valentin Câmpeanu v. Romania , 1016 under some circumstances non governmental organisation may lodge a complaint with the Court alleging breaches of even these provisions of the Convention. Accordingly, limitations on the Articles,

1011 CHRISTOFFERSEN, 2009, cited above, p. 149. 1012 Chizhov v. Ukraine (dec.) , no. 6962/02, § 2, 6 May 2003. 1013 HARRIS, 2009, cited above, p. 560.

1014 Bubbins v. the United Kingdom , no. 50196/99, § 170, ECHR 2005-II (extracts). 1015 Boyle and Rice v. the United Kingdom , 27 April 1988, § 55, Series a no. 131. 1016 Centre for Legal Resources [GC], cited above.

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