Information Note on the Court’s case-law 248
February 2021
Samadov v. Armenia (dec.) - 36606/08
Decision 26.1.2021 [Section III]
Article 35
Article 35-1
Six-month period
Out of time application in respect of continuing conflict-based interference with home/property, introduced six years after State’s Convention ratification: inadmissible
Facts – The applicant was forced to flee from his home and property in Kalbajar (a district surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh) when, in 1993, it was invaded and captured by ethnic Armenian forces. Due to the occupation of Kalbajar, the applicant had not been able to return to his home and property, living instead with his family in housing assigned to them as internally displaced persons.
Law – Article 35 § 1: The present case concerned a continuing situation in a complex post-conflict context affecting large groups of persons. In the context of their accession to the Council of Europe, Armenia and Azerbaijan had given a joint undertaking to seek a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. That undertaking and the States’ ratification of the Convention had led to a phase of intensified contacts and negotiations. Thus, the applicant, like hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons, could for some time thereafter have reasonably expected that a solution to the conflict would eventually be achieved, containing a basis for the settlement of property issues and for the question of the return of displaced persons as one aspect. However, several years later the hope of a political solution must have been considered to have turned very weak. In particular, the negotiations conducted by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group had not led to any agreement between the parties to the conflict in the years that followed. Thus, several years after Armenia’s ratification of the Convention, potential applications should have become aware that there was no longer any realistic hope of regaining access to their property and home in the foreseeable future.
The present application had been introduced in 2008 more than six years after Armenia’s ratification of the Convention and its entry into force in 2002 and, at the time of introduction, more than fifteen years since the applicant’s forced displacement from his alleged property and home. His inability to return to his former domicile or to have any other access to or compensation for his property and home had thus remained unchanged for a considerable period of time, during which there had been no domestic petitions made or proceedings conducted and no political solution in sight. There had been no property claims mechanisms or other procedures in either Armenia or Azerbaijan whose conclusion the applicant and other potential claimants had to wait for before applying to the court (contrast Demopoulos and Others v. Greece). Moreover, there had been no other indication that the applicant had been unable to introduce his application with a shorter delay: more than a thousand similar applications had been lodged with the Court in the years 2004-07. Even with due regard had to the applicant’s personal status as a displaced person, the period of six years had to be considered excessive. Consequently, by introducing his application only at that time, he had failed to act with due diligence.
Conclusion: inadmissible (out of time).
(See also Demopoulos and Others v. Turkey (dec.) [GC], 46113/99 and al., 1 March 2010, Legal Summary, and Chiragov and Others v. Armenia [GC], 13216/05, 16 June 2015, Legal Summary)
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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