European Court of Human Rights (free to file)

http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Appli ... _1_ENG.pdf

If you are tired of the UK repeatedly violating the human rights of British children and their families, please consider filing a free application to the European Court of Human Rights. They need to know what is happening.

The form should not take too long to fill out. It is just 10 or so pages. You just print and post. It is free.

Thanks,

If you decide to apply to the Court, please ensure that your application complies with Rule 47 of the Rules of Court, which sets out the information and documents that must be provided.

Failure to provide any of the information or documents required by Rule 47 §§ 1 and 2 may result in the complaints not being examined by the Court. It is imperative that all fields in the application form are filled in.

Applications to the Court must be sent by post to the following address:

The Registrar
European Court of Human Rights
Council of Europe
F-67075 Strasbourg cedex

I was considering filing an application to the European courts of human rights but I decided not to and wait for the outcome of my reconsideration request.

I'm a little confused with the process, who is the main applicant ie the EU citizen or the Non-EU spouse?

If you haven't exhausted domestic remedies - e.g. a judicial review - then you're likely to be declared inadmissible:

http://appform.echr.coe.int/echrappchec ... Check=true

Although do note the 'practical guide' http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Admis ... de_ENG.pdf

Paragraph 48 in particular.

But don't waste another court's time please - we all pay enough taxes as it is.

I wholly object to the exercise of rights as a "waste of another court's time"

People, do not let others frighten or discourage you from exercising your rights!

How many times must the same issues arise before someone understands that the abuse is systematic and not just 'bad luck'?

Article 8 violations should not occur on a regular basis.

To accept the status quo of human rights violations as somehow 'normal' is bizarre.

Plenty of people have gone to court on their issues. It is highly unlikely that any will make it to the Supreme Court.

You do not have to go to the Supreme Court before you lodge a claim with the European Court of Human Rights. You just have to have applied.

Steps:
1.) Send pre action letter to Home Office asking them to give you what you want.
2.) Apply for permission to judicial review if they do not give you what you want.
3.) Go to judicial review if allowed; otherwise file free application with ECHR.
4.) Apply for permission to go to Court of Appeal (assuming you went to judicial review but lost.) If they refuse you permission to go to Court of Appeal (highly likely), you can go to ECHR.

If refused to progress any further by the Court of Appeal, you can file with the ECHR. You can use the same documents you used for steps 1-4.

*sigh*

I'm not saying don't exercise any of your rights.

I'm saying that don't make applications to a court which will simply be struck out. Analyse your situation carefully, make sure you are confident of your application and THEN make it.

To simply say 'apply' to anyone and everyone is to waste a court's time and theirs if their case has to be analysed and then declared inadmissible.

To say 'apply when you have a case' is sensible.

A lot of complaints on here are about the length of time it takes to get to a tribunal or to the appeal courts or even to the ECHR. Part of the reason (not ALL of the reason - but part) is down to vexatious applications by people who have no chance of winning their case or it even being heard. The result is that those who have a genuine case fail to get heard in a timely manner which causes others more pain.

UKBA have a lot to answer for in terms of processing, decisions and general quality of their work. The government have a lot to answer for in the way they set the immigration legislation. But none of that means that people whose case has no chance of being heard should be encouraged to clog up the courts even more.

Consider your situation before doing anything. If you have a genuine case - which a legal advisor will help you work out - go for it.

And just for clarity - I'm going to repeat that statement again in bold as people have a habit of only reading the points they disagree with:

If you have a genuine case - which a legal advisor will help you work out - go for it.

I want to add. When my solicitor was pressing the tribunal to get the right to appeal, in one of their refusal letters they stated that we should put in an Human rights application. It seems strange for them to say that when I have not used the option of JR.

Now my thinking is that ECH court may still accept applications if you mention on there that you could not afford to go down the expensive JR route as not everyone is able to pay solicitor fees to do this.

@MPH80

There is no need for virtual sighs. Just be clear and say what you mean. Your "sigh" reflects a lack of respect for non legal posters (migrants) who express opinions.

You could have easily said, "Please make sure you have a valid case before filing and/or spoken to a solicitor." Instead, you chose to (rather sarcastically state), "But don't waste another court's time please - we all pay enough taxes as it is."

Where is your complaint about when the Home Office wastes taxpayer money through its nonsense refusals?

It goes without saying that frivolous cases should not go before the courts. I, for one, don't believe many people on this site would waste their time if they did not feel they had a case. I also believe that they can and will exercise sound judgment as to whether their human right has been trampled on. Despite whatever degrees/licenses you may have, we are not talking rocket science.

Moreover, many Home Office delays and refusals are overturned- if not on legal grounds then on Human Rights grounds. I believe one statistic shows 80% of Zambrano in the First Tier Tribunal are in favour of the migrant.

Finally, Dominic Grieve himself recently states that the UK is willfully violating HR.

"Grieve said he was particularly concerned by the suggestion “that we would only implement the ECHR if a parliamentary motion said that the government should” for each specific piece of legislation – a move that he said would leave Britain open to the claim that it was failing to adhere to its international obligations."

More quotes:

"The European court of human rights will be prevented from overruling decisions made by British courts under plans set to be announced by the Conservatives this week. The justice secretary, Chris Grayling, said that the Conservatives wanted to scrap the Human Rights Act so that the final decisions in controversial cases could be made by the supreme court rather than the European court of human rights...
The Tories have long wanted to curb the power of the Strasbourg-based court, which they believe has forced unacceptable decisions on Britain."

For more information on Judicial Reviews:

JUDICIAL REVIEW: A QUICK AND EASY GUIDE

http://www.leighday.co.uk/LeighDay/medi ... -Guide.pdf

Judicial review

Judicial review is a type of court proceeding in which a judge reviews the lawfulness of a decision or action made by a public body.

In other words, judicial reviews are a challenge to the way in which a decision has been made, rather than the rights and wrongs of the conclusion reached.

It is not really concerned with the conclusions of that process and whether those were ‘right’, as long as the right procedures have been followed. The court will not substitute what it thinks is the ‘correct’ decision.

This may mean that the public body will be able to make the same decision again, so long as it does so in a lawful way.

If you want to argue that a decision was incorrect, judicial review may not be best for you. There are alternative remedies, such as appealing against the decision to a higher court.

Examples of the types of decision which may fall within the range of judicial review include:

Decisions of local authorities in the exercise of their duties to provide various welfare benefits and special education for children in need of such education;
Certain decisions of the immigration authorities and Immigration Appellate Authority;
Decisions of regulatory bodies;
Decisions relating to prisoner’s rights.

Actually - my virtual sigh was at someone deciding to read what they wanted into the words I wrote rather than read the actual words.

It's a sigh because it then means I have to repeat myself repeatedly until people are clear on the point I am trying to get across.

Everyone has a right to petition the court. Everyone who needs to should use that right.

People who have no chance of winning in the court should not petition the court. It wastes their time, it wastes the court's time and it wastes the money the taxpayers (including me and you) pay into it and - probably most importantly - it provides false hope to those individuals.

And for clarity - those 'people who have no chance of winning' also include the home office a good amount of the time!

Just because the Home Office makes a lot of mistakes and pursues appeals it shouldn't doesn't mean everyone else should suddenly do the same. Two wrongs do not make a right.

Your last two quotes have nothing to do with the point I'm making. Let's keep it to the point.

Oh - and I have no legal training.

M.

Admissibility Criteria:http://www.dp-rs.si/fileadmin/dp.gov.si ... de_ENG.pdf

The Court can only examine your case where:

 the complaints relate to infringements of one or more of the rights set out in the Convention and Protocols;

 the complaints are directed against a State which has ratified the Convention or the Protocol in question (not all States have ratified every Protocol so check the list of ratifications on the Court’s website at http://www.echr.coe.int/applicants);

 the complaints relate to matters which involve the responsibility of a public authority (legislature, administrative body, court of law etc.); the Court cannot deal with complaints directed against private individuals or private organisations;

 the complaints concern acts or events occurring after the date of ratification by the State of the Convention or the Protocol in question (see the dates for each State on the list of ratifications on the Court’s website at http://www.echr.coe.int/applicants);

 you are personally and directly affected by the breach of a fundamental right (you have “victim status”);

you have given the domestic system the opportunity to put right the breach of your rights (“exhaustion of domestic remedies”); this generally means that before applying to the Court you must have raised the same complaints in the national courts, including the highest court. This involves complying with national rules of procedure, including time limits. You do not have to make use of remedies which are ineffective or apply for special discretionary or extraordinary remedies outside the normal appeal procedures;

{My initial thoughts: A judicial review can not challenge the outcome of a decision, only the process by which it was made. Unless you receive the sort of decision from the Home Office triggers that carries automatic appeal rights, I can not see any obvious remedy to the problem of wanting to overturn a non appealable Home Office decision. A judicial review may perhaps provide an "ineffective" remedy to overturning a HO decision since it does not actually overturn the flawed decision. Therefore, application to the ECHR may be valid and worth pursuing even when you have not gone through the UK courts. An application to the ECHR would also be worthwhile even after you have gone through the UK courts.}

you have lodged your complete application with the Court within six months from the final domestic decision in the national system. The six-month period normally runs from the date on which the decision of the highest competent national court or authority was given, or was served on you or your lawyer. Where there is no available effective remedy for a complaint, the six-month period runs from the date of the act, event or decision complained about. The six-month period is only interrupted when you send the Court a complete application which complies with the requirements of Rule 47 of the Rules of Court (see the text set out in the Application Pack). The period ends on the last day of the six months even if it is a Sunday or public holiday. To sum up, the application form, together with all the required information and documents, must be dispatched to the Court on or before the final day of the six-month period, so make sure you send them through the post in good time;

 your complaints are based on solid evidence; you have to substantiate your claims by telling your story clearly and supporting it with documents, decisions, medical reports, witness statements and other material;

 you are able to show that the matters about which you complain have interfered unjustifiably with a fundamental right. You cannot just complain that a court’s decision was wrong or that a domestic tribunal made a mistake; the Court is not a court of appeal from national courts and cannot annul or alter their decisions;

 your complaints have not already been examined by the Court or another international body.

**Where the matter complained about does not cause an applicant any real harm or significant disadvantage, raises no new human rights issues that need to be addressed at international level and has already been looked at by a domestic court, the case may also be rejected.

If several people have the same or a similar complaint, they can file as a group.....


Grouped applications and multiple applicants

Where an applicant or representative lodges complaints on behalf of two or more applicants whose applications are based on different facts, a separate application form should be filled in for each individual, giving all the information required. The documents relevant to each applicant should also be annexed to that individual’s application form.

Where there are more than five applicants, the representative should provide, in addition to the application forms and documents, a table setting out the required identifying details for each applicant, an example of which may be downloaded from the Court’s website (see http://www.echr.coe.int/applicants). Where the representative is a lawyer, this table should also be
provided in electronic form (on a CD-ROM or memory stick).

In cases of large groups of applicants or applications, applicants or their representatives may be directed by the Registry to provide the text of their submissions or documents by electronic or other means. Other directions may be given by the Registry as to the steps required to facilitate the effective and speedy processing of applications.

Failure to comply with directions by the Registry as to the form or manner in which grouped applications or applications by multiple applicants are to be lodged may lead to the cases not being allocated for examination by the Court (see Rule 47 § 5.2).

A few suggestions on making an application:
http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Notes ... _1_ENG.pdf

[I estimate about 4 days to put the application together. I would be interested in knowing how long everyone else takes. Much of the required information is reused from Home Office and court applications, anyway.]

All submissions must:
 be wholly legible (readable);
 if typed, be set out in a font size of at least 12 pt in the body of the text and 10 pt in the footnotes;
 in the case of annexes, be set out in A4 page format with a margin of not less than 3.5 cm;
 have pages numbered consecutively;
 be divided into numbered paragraphs

A. The applicant (Individual) [est 5 minutes]
1. Surname
2. First name(s)
3. Date of birth
4. Nationality
5. Address
6. Telephone
7. Email
8. Sex

B. The applicant (Organisation) [est 5 minutes, if necessary]
9. Name
10. Identification number
11. Date of registration or incorporation
12. Activity
13. Registered address
14. Telephone
15. Email

C. Representative(s) of the applicant [est 5 minutes, if necessary]

Non-lawyer/Organisation official
16. Capacity / relationship / function
17. Surname
18. First name(s)
19. Nationality
20. Address
21. Telephone
22. Fax
23. Email

Lawyer
24. Surname
25. First name(s)
26. Nationality
27. Address
28. Telephone
29. Fax
30. Email

Authority
31. Signature of applicant
32. Date

D. State(s) against which the application is directed [est 1 minute]
33. Tick the name(s) of the State(s) against which the application is directed
---GBR - United Kingdom

E. Statement of the facts [est 1-5 days]
34-36. Be clear and concise. Give exact dates. Be chronological. Set out events in the order in which they occurred. If your complaints relate to a number of different matters (for example different sets of court proceedings), please deal with each factual matter separately.

F. Statement of alleged violation(s) of the Convention and/or Protocols and relevant arguments [est 1-5 days]
37. For each complaint raised, you must specify the Article of the Convention or Protocol invoked and give brief explanations as to how it has been infringed. Explain as precisely as you can what your complaint under the Convention is. Indicate which
Convention provision you rely on and explain why the facts that you have set out entail a violation of that provision. Explanations of this kind must be given for each individual complaint.

G. Information concerning exhaustion of domestic remedies and the six-month time-limit (Article 35 § 1 of the Convention) [1-3 days]
38. Here you must show that you have given the State a chance to put matters right before having recourse to the international jurisdiction of the Court. This means you must explain that you have used the available effective remedies in the country concerned.

39-40. Here you should state if there was an available remedy which you did not use. If so, you should give the reasons why you did not make use of it.

H. Information concerning other international proceedings (if any) [Probably not applicable?]
41-42. You must indicate whether you have submitted the complaints in your application to any other procedure of international investigation or settlement, for example a United Nations body such as the ILO or the UN Human Rights Committee, or an international arbitration panel. If you have, you should give details, including the name of the body to which you submitted your complaints, the dates and details of any proceedings which took place and details of any decisions that were taken. You should also submit copies of relevant decisions and other documents.

43-44. Previous or pending applications before the Court: You should also specify whether you as an applicant have, or have had, any other applications before the Court and, if so, give the application number(s). This is vital to assist the Court in filing, retrieving and processing the different applications under your name.

I. List of accompanying documents [est 1/2 to 1 day]
45. You must enclose a numbered and chronological list of all judgments and decisions referred to in sections E., F., G. and H. of the application form, as well as any other documents you wish the Court to take into consideration as evidence supporting your claims of a violation of the Convention (transcripts, witness statements, medical reports etc.).

And finally.....

Declaration and signature [est 1 minute]
47-48. The applicant, or the authorised representative, must sign the declaration. No one else can do so.

49. Confirmation of correspondent
The Registry will only correspond with one applicant or one representative, so if there are a number of applicants and no representative has been appointed, one applicant should be identified as the person with whom the Registry should correspond.

The application form may be downloaded from the Court’s website http://www.echr.coe.int/applicants.

Send the application form to:
The Registrar
European Court of Human Rights
Council of Europe
67075 STRASBOURG CEDEX
FRANCE

Once you have sent the application:

On receipt of the application form, the Registry of the Court will verify that it contains all the information and documents required. If it does not, you will receive a reply stating that Rule 47 has not been complied with, that no file has been opened and no documents have been kept. It is open to you to submit a fresh application...

If the application form submitted is complete, you may receive a reply from the Registry telling you that a file (the number of which must be mentioned in all subsequent correspondence) has been opened in your name and sending you a set of barcodes which you should attach to any future correspondence.

C. No court fees
Your case will be dealt with free of charge. You will automatically be informed of any decision taken by the Court.

Would the mods please lock this thread.I am in the opinion that it has served its usefullness.

peppekalle wrote:Would the mods please lock this thread.I am in the opinion that it has served its usefullness.

Agreed. I find it clutters up the forum, can it not be moved out of the way?

I think this is quite a useful thread for those who have genuine cases to share their experience.

It should be made a sticky.

mkhan2525 wrote:I think this is quite a useful thread for those who have genuine cases to share their experience.

It should be made a sticky.

Thanks for your support, MKHAN2525!!

Cases against the United Kingdom at the European Court of Human Rights since 1975

http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn05611.pdf
[url]file:///C:/Users/library/Downloads/sn05611.pdf[/url]
http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/CP_Un ... om_ENG.pdf
http://jonyorkehumanrights.blogspot.co. ... ey-by.html

European Court of Human Rights, Strasbourg Judge Paul Mahoney:

"The Court now gives priority of treatment to requests for interim measures under Rule 39 of the Rules of Court, to cases which involve the core rights, to cases where there is a risk to life, health, human dignity or which seriously affect specific personal or family circumstances, for instance when the well-being of a child is at stake."

"At the end of the day, it's possible for somebody from a tiny village to come here, take their government to court and get the law changed. That really is a small miracle."

So it is not, as one senior judge observes, your average court: "Other courts deal with demands in justice – guilty or not guilty. This one deals with demands for justice. Its job is to signal a dysfunction in the rule of law."

It would be interesting to see the outcome of cases regarding ILR, DLR, Claiming Benefits, Family Members, etc.

Here are a few sample cases, just to show that you CAN win! :

Date Party Details of Case

21 September 2010 Kay and others Leases of housing units provided to applicants by charitable housing trust under special scheme terminated by Lambeth B.C. Applicants complained of possession proceedings brought against them and inability to challenge possession orders: breach of Article 8.

18 January 2011 MGN Limited The Daily Mirror publishing company complained of breach of its freedom of expression rights as a result of the national courts’ finding against it for breaching Naomi Campbell’s privacy and ordering payment of success fees agreed between Ms Campbell and her lawyers in relation to the privacy proceedings. No breach of Article 10 in respect of breach of confidence; breach of Article 10 in respect of the success fees payable by applicant.

20 September 2011 A.A. Removal to Nigeria following conviction and release on licence: breach of Article 8 in the event of deportation.

27 September 2011 Bah Local authority refusal to prioritise social housing request of Sierra Leonean national: no breach of Article 14 taken in conjunction with Article 8.

13 March 2012 Y.C. Failure to order assessment of claimant as sole carer for son and to have regard to all relevant considerations when making placement order: no breach of Article 8.

18 September 2012 Buckland Upholding of possession order despite applicant’s inability to challenge decision: breach of Article 8.

6 November 2012 Hode and Abdi Inability of immigrants with limited leave to remain as refugees to be joined by post-flight spouses: breach of Article 14 in conjunction with Article 8.

9 April 2013 Abdi Duration of detention pending deportation to Somalia: breach of Article 5.1.