NGOs under European Convention on Human Rights / Tymofeyeva

NGO as a victimmay require protection under Articles 2, 3 and 5 of the Convention. The treaty is question employs the principle of ‘living instrument’, so the development of the Court’s practice will have to give an answer as to the possible limitations of the guarantees applicable to NGOs. Duties of an applicant When acting as an applicant, an NGO must comply with the admissibility requirements as defined in Article 35 of the Convention. They are specified in Rule 47 of the Rules of Court. In accordance with this Rule, the applicants must provide the Court with the documents proving the fulfilment of the conditions of eligibility (for example, exhaustion of domestic remedies 374 and filing an application within six months from the date on which the final decision was taken 375 ). In addition, NGOs are obliged to indicate whether they submitted their complaints mentioned in the application to any other institution of international investigation or settlement, for example to the UN Committee of Human Rights. 376 Furthermore, the applicants which do not wish their identity to be disclosed to the public shall so indicate. It is also necessary to file a statement of the reasons justifying such a departure from the normal rule of public access to information in the proceedings before the Court. The President of the Chamber may authorise anonymity or grant it of his or her own motion. NGOs usually do not use this type of protection provided by the Court and do not normally make this type of statement. It may be explained first by the fact that NGOs, within the meaning of Article 34 of the Convention, very often are legal persons, which do not disclose the identities of its members. The second reason is that anonymity was as a rule required by natural persons when sensitive information was concerned, for instance, when an individual was a transsexual, 377 homosexual 378 or an individual facing risk of torture for political reasons. 379 In view of the nature of the applicant NGOs, they are typically not the victims in cases when this type of information may be of importance. The applicant is also required to inform the Court about any change of address and of any fact that is important for evaluation of the application. In the case of non compliance with these obligations, the Court may refuse to examine the application. The information of this type is not available in the Court’s database, HUDOC. The refusals in question are not made in the form of a decision of the Court, but by means of a simple letter under Rule 47 of the Rules of Court. It is, therefore, impossible to calculate any statistics on the subject. In accordance with Rule 60 of the Rules of Court, if an NGO wishes to obtain an award of just satisfaction under the Convention, providing that the Court found 374 Magyar Keresztény Mennonita Egyház , cited above, § 50. 375 Centro Europa 7 S.r.l., cited above, §§ 101-105. 376 The detailed information on the UN Committee of Human Rights is available on accessed 20 July 2015. 377 X, Y and Z v. the United Kingdom , 22 April 1997, § 12, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1997-II. 378 L. and V. v. Austria , nos. 39392/98 and 39829/98, § 10, ECHR 2003-I. 379 M.A. v. Switzerland , no. 52589/13, § 4, 18 November 2014.

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