NGOs under European Convention on Human Rights / Tymofeyeva

before it by advocates from law firms 496 or lawyers working in NGOs. 497 The author did not find any case where an applicant was represented by a lawyer from a political party. Therefore, it can be concluded that the features of an NGO in the capacity of a representative are not absolutely the same as those of the applicant NGO. Again, however, the case-law contains no examples of the Court stating that representation by a member of a political party is forbidden. Article 46 of the Convention and Rule 9 of the Rules of the Committee of Ministers Although it is not specified precisely in any Article of the Convention, when judges and lawyers of the Court search for information related to a case, NGOs often appear before them in the capacity of providers of information . The data elaborated by NGOs may be taken into account in the course of the proceedings before the Court as well as at the execution stage. There can be five typical situations when information is provided to the Court during the decision-making process. Different studies of NGOs may be collected by the Court itself or submitted to the Court by 1) the applicants, 2) their representatives, 3) the respondent governments, 4) third parties or can be 5) collected by the Court itself. In the case of the applicants, representatives and third parties, the function of the NGOs information-providers overlaps with the capacities described above. Therefore, here we will focus only on the information of the last type that is when the Court’s staff personally gathers the studies. According to Rule 9 of the Rules of the Committee of Ministers, in the course of the execution of the Courts’ judgment, NGOs are also entitled to provide the Committee of Ministers with information regarding the execution of judgments under Article 46, paragraph 2, of the Convention. This Rule 9 states that, “the Committee of Ministers shall be entitled to consider any communication from non governmental organisations, as well as national institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights”. Grammatical interpretation of this expression may lead to the conclusion that only human rights organisations and institutions have a right to submit such information to the Committee of Ministers. The Court’s practice confirms this and shows that the submissions are received mostly from well established human rights NGOs. For example, in the case of Alekseyev v. Russia , 498 on 17 February 2014 the Court received communications from the NGOs, the Russian LGBT Human Rights Project GayRussia.Ru and the Moscow Pride Organizing Committee. 499 In the Czech D. H. case 500 on 5 December 2013, comments were 497 See for example the representation by Interights in the case of Maskhadova and Others v. Russia , no. 18071/05, § 2, 6 June 2013 or by the Human Rights Centre “Memorial” in the case of Kasymakhunov and Saybatalov v. Russia , nos. 26261/05 and 26377/06, § 2, 14 March 2013. 498 Alekseyev v. Russia , nos. 4916/07, 25924/08 and 14599/09, 21 October 2010. 499 1193 meeting (4-6 March 2014) (DH) – Communication from NGOs (Russian LGBT Human Rights Project GayRussia.Ru and Moscow Pride Organizing Committee) (17/02/2014) in the case of Alekseyev against Russian Federation (Application No. 4916/07) – Rule 9.2 of the Rules of the Committee of Ministers (Anglais uniquement). 500 D. H. [GC], cited above. 496 Scharsach and News Verlagsgesellschaft , cited above, § 2.

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