The Right to Petition in International Human Rights Law: Standards of the United Nations and the European Court of Human Rights
Keywords:
right to petition, United Nations, European Court of Human RightsAbstract
The right to petition public authorities is one of the foundational procedural guarantees of democratic governance and the international human rights system, enabling individuals to communicate grievances, seek legal protection, and participate in public administration. Although international human rights treaties rarely codify the right to petition as a free-standing right, its normative content has developed through an interlocking set of guarantees — freedom of expression, access to justice, effective remedies, participation in public affairs, and good administration. This article examines the legal foundations of the right to petition under the United Nations human rights framework and under the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), with particular attention to Article 34 of the European Convention on Human Rights and its interpretation in Akdivar and Others v. Turkey, Petra v. Romania, Cotlet v. Romania, and Mamatkulov and Askarov v. Turkey. The analysis shows that contemporary international law treats the right to petition as a composite procedural institution rather than a single substantive entitlement, and it identifies the principal state obligations — negative and positive — that this institution generates
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