NGOs under European Convention on Human Rights / Tymofeyeva

the case before the Court. Nonetheless, each of them would be obliged to fill in the application from individually. The case of Koky and Others v. Slovakia 194 concerned a violation of Article 3 of the Convention in respect of a group of Roma people. This case concerned a national criminal investigation related to an offence titled ‘ violence against a group of individuals’ under Article 196 §§ 1 and 2 of the Slovakian Criminal Code. Although the Roma nationals acted as a group in the litigations before the domestic courts and the Constitutional Court of Slovakia, in the proceeding before the Court they were called ‘ten Slovak nationals of Roma ethnic origin’ and later ‘the applicants’, without any reference to any precise category of applicants under Article 34 of the Convention. From the formulations used in this judgment, it is not possible to conclude whether the Court considered these Slovak nationals of Roma ethnic origin to be a group of individuals or the individuals themselves. A group need not be formally registered or recognised by the state in order to lodge an application with the Court. 195 However, as we have seen in the examples given above, the Court has never stated that a certain applicant is a group of individuals for the purposes of the Convention. In one set of cases, when a number of individuals submitted the applications, the Court considered the applicants to be NGOs in the sense of Article 34 of the Convention. 196 In other similar cases, the Court titled the cases under the names of the individuals who lodged the applications with the Court. 197 Accordingly, they fell under the category ‘any person’. It is also of interest that, though in the ‘Keywords’ search of the HUDOC database there is a special category under Article 34 titled ‘Group of individuals’, the number of cases belonging to it is zero. 198 Meanwhile, the other categories under the same Article of the Convention do have cases. For example, under the keywords ‘Non governmental organisation’, one may find 19 items. 199 In many cases, the Court does not make a distinction between the categories of ‘any person’, ‘NGO’ and ‘group of individuals’. Habitually, if there are no objections from the side of the government, the Court does not address the issue of the locus standi of an applicant at all. In some cases, in which the Court dealt with the status of an applicant and held that the application is incompatible ratione personae with the provisions of the Convention within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (a), it came to the conclusion that the applicant was not a “person, non-governmental organisation or group of individuals” within the meaning of Article 34 of the Convention. Examples 194 Koky and Others v. Slovakia , no. 13624/03, 12 June 2012. 195 Minority Rights under the European Convention on Human Rights . Pamphlet No. 7 (online). URL: accessed 20 July 2015. 196 Association “21 December 1989” and Others v. Romania , nos. 33810/07 and 18817/08, 24 May 2011 and Association of Victims of Romanian Judges and Others v. Romania , no. 47732/06, 14 January 2014. 197 Koretskyy and Others v. Ukraine , no. 40269/02, 3 April 2008 and Ramazanova and Others v. Azerbaijan , no. 44363/02, 1 February 2007. 198 See Keywords on accessed 17 May 2015. 199 Data valid on 17 May 2015.

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