| Summary: | This thesis examines the role of NGOs before the European Court of Human Rights
(ECtHR), drawing on interview data with a variety of stakeholders. It is often assumed
that NGOs enhance the function of international courts to solve disputes, process cases
efficiently, and foster the development of international law. Above all, NGOs are often
said to play a re-distributive role: supporting the comparatively less powerful applicants
(typically human rights victims) and thereby advancing social change. Against this
backdrop, this thesis makes use of empirical research in an attempt to present a more
nuanced picture of the role of NGOs than the above narrative alone may suggest.
Taking the ECtHR as a field of research, this thesis explores the gap between the
prevailing narratives and the reality of NGOs’ activities before the ECtHR. Deploying
the sociological framework suggested by Anthony Giddens, the author focuses on the
daily routines of players before the ECtHR, rather than their discourses alone, in an
attempt to to understand and reveal hidden social dynamics. The author conducted
interviews with a variety of stakeholders, including activists of large NGOs but also
activists of smaller NGOs as well as Registry lawyers working at the ECtHR.
The empirical data reveals a complicated, interdependent Court-NGO relationship
which differs from the expected narrative. The data suggests that Large NGOs, under
the pressure from the Court to provide ‘useful’ information and maximise its efficiency,
seek an interdependent relationship through third-party interventions, despite the
acknowledged unlikelihood of influencing the Court’s jurisprudence, while smaller
NGOs lack the resources necessary to build this type of interdependent relationship with
the Court and consequentially face a diminished role, to the detriment of the ECtHR’s
human rights objectives.
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