NGOs under European Convention on Human Rights / Tymofeyeva

Providing information in the course of the proceedings before the Court The Court, usually, refers to reports of famous NGOs in the section of a judgment titled ‘Relevant law and practice’. For example, in the case of Abdulkhakov v. Russia, 457 the Court cited the reports of Amnesty International (hereinafter also referred to as the ‘AI’) and Human Rights Watch (hereinafter also referred to as the ‘HRW’). Namely, the Court referred to HRW’s report of 29 March 2004 ‘Creating Enemies of the State: Religious Persecution in Uzbekistan’, and AI’s document of 1 May 2010 ‘Uzbekistan: a Briefing on Current Human Rights Concerns’. Annual reports of both organisations related to the situation in Uzbekistan. The other example where the Court referred to the reports of these two NGOs is the case of I.K. v. Austria. 458 This time reports concerned human rights violations in Russia in 2012, including arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment, and extrajudicial executions by law-enforcement officials in Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia. The applicant in this case complained that removing him to the Russian Federation would violate Articles 2 and 3 of the Convention. On the basis of the case materials, together with information elaborated by NGOs, the Court held that the applicant’s removal to Russia would indeed contravene Article 3 of the Convention. Additionally, the reports of AI and HRW were subject to consideration in the cases of Savriddin Dzhurayev v. Russia 459 and El Masri v. “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”. 460 The case of M. S. S. v. Belgium and Greece 461 provides us with an example of the usage of information from a larger number of NGO reports of various kinds. In particular, the AI report ‘Greece: No place for an asylum-seeker’, the report ‘A gamble with the right to asylum in Europe – Greek asylum policy and the Dublin II regulation’ of a Norwegian NGO, Norwegian Organisation for Asylum Seekers (‘NOAS’), and the report ‘Undocumented Migration: Counting the uncountable: data and trends across Europe’ made by the Clandestino project. In the judgment of the Grand Chamber in the case of Catan and Others v. Moldova and Russia, 462 an entire section was named ‘Reports of inter-governmental and non governmental organisations’. This part of the judgment consisted of three subsections, namely: A. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, B. The Organisation for Security andCo-operation in Europe (OSCE) andC. International non-governmental organisations. In part C, the Court quoted the report of the International Crisis Group, ‘Moldova: Regional Tensions overTransdniestria’ (EuropeReport no. 157), and the report of FreedomHouse, ‘Freedom in the World 2009’. The title of part C, ‘International non governmental organisations’, 463 could lead to the conclusion that the Court takes into account only information from international NGOs.

Abdulkhakov , cited above.

457

I.K. , cited above.

458

Savriddin Dzhurayev , cited above.

459

El Masri [GC], cited above.

460

M. S. S., cited above.

461

462 Catan and Others v. the Republic of Moldova and Russia [GC], nos. 43370/04, 8252/05 and 18454/06, 19 October 2012. 463 Catan , cited above, § 71.

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