9 - General Requirements and Principles

Summary

Chapter 9 analyzes three requirements and principles that are overarching to access to justice and redress. First, the remedy must provide the applicant with a personal right. This implies that it does not suffice that the national authority has supervisory or discretionary power to look at the case and provide redress and that it cannot be left solely in the hands of the State to set the remedy in motion. Second, how an aggregate of remedies may satisfy Article 13. This principle has been criticized. However, as the chapter illustrates, an aggregate of remedies may, also, enhance the effectiveness of the remedial task. Further, the chapter demonstrates how the Court, currently, applies the requirement in a stricter manner. Third, how the remedy must be effective not only in theory but also in practice. Also this requirement has, in recent years, been applied in a stricter manner by the Court. But it remains uncertain whether the remedy needs to be generally ineffective, for example, because of systemic problems, or to what extent more isolated acts or omissions, also, may render the remedy ineffective in practice.