Friday 5 July 2019

Information on Involvement of Civil Society and NHRIs in Execution of Judgments Phase

While in law schools we tend to focus ourselves and our students on the judgments of the Court (and so do many practitioners), a crucial phase, that of implementation, of course only starts after a judgment has been delivered. In the ECHR system, the Committee of Ministers is tasked with the supervision of the execution of judgments. It is supported in that role by the Council of Europe's Department for the Execution of Judgments. Since 'ears and eyes' on the ground are often very useful to provide context and addition information, this post-judgment phase allows for a degree of involvement of civl society nad national human rights institutions (NHRIs). The Department has now launched a special web page which gives an overview of how to do this. Since this information was previously not easily available, this is a very useful resource, which has come about at the request of civil society itself. The page includes an Information Note on best practices of how and when to address the Committee of Ministers. It also includes a useful flowchart of the timeline as well as the possibility to subscribe to an RSS feed to remain updated on relevant cases. Thus, the website reflects an important improvement in terms of information and accessibility, although additions would still be useful, according to the European Implementation Network.

And a small note: this is the 1001st post on this ECHR blog since its inception!