Human Rights cases go online

The European Court of Human Rights has announced on June 25, 2007 the launch of two initiatives: web-casting its public hearings and the provision of new information about pending cases on its website. At a press conference held in the Human Rights Building, Strasbourg, the Court's President Jean-Paul Costa and Irish Ambassador to the Council of Europe James Sharkey gave journalists a preview of a future webcast which will enable journalists and the public to view the Court's hearings from anywhere in the world and to download extracts of interest. The first hearing to be broadcast on the Court's Internet site (www.echr.coe.int) will be in the case of Maumousseau and Washington v. France 1 on June 28, 2007. The hearing will be held at 9 a.m. and the webcast will be made available on the Court's website from 2.30 p.m. that day. The second important initiative concerns the provision of information about pending cases on the Court's site. As from today, a report (accessible through "Pending cases", "Press" and the Court's database HUDOC) will appear on the Court's Internet site every Monday, giving a list of cases which have been officially communicated to the Government of the country against which the applicant's complaints are directed. For each case there will be a link to a summary of the facts, the applicants' complaints and the questions put by the Court to the parties. This information will be in one of the Court's official languages, English or French. In 2006 the Court communicated some 3200 applications to Governments, many of which were routine or repetitive. The published list will contain only those cases which are considered by the Court to be of greater interest. A case will appear on the list on the third Monday after the week in which the decision to communicate it was taken.