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Home > JHR > Vol. 24 > Iss. 3 (2026)

 

Abstract

May international human rights mechanisms close their doors to individuals who insult their members or Member States? Several do so, but the basis, scope, and impact of such rejections remain mostly unexamined. This article maps the relevant practices of regional and United Nations human rights bodies and compares them to other courts’ responses to contempt of court or vexatious litigation, to understand whether this admissibility criterion is a proper application of the prohibition on abuse of the right of petition or a legitimate exercise of a human rights body’s inherent powers. Three approaches emerge: ignore, balance, and punish. While the UN and Inter-American human rights bodies may reject complaints that are an abuse of the right of petition or manifestly out of order, they have apparently opted to pay no notice to complainants’ colorful language. The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights requires rejection of complaints that use insulting or disparaging language, but the continental rights mechanisms have gradually developed a practice of ensuring that their application of this rule takes into account the complainant’s freedom of expression. However, in claiming a seemingly unlimited power to reject complaints for offensive language, the European Court of Human Rights emerges as an outlier whose practice is out of step with its peers, exceeds the bounds of its textual authority, cannot be justified by reference to inherent powers, and ignores complainants’ human rights. In view of States’ repeated attempts to nudge other human rights mechanisms to adopt the ECtHR’s approach, this article argues that any power to reject individual human rights complaints due to offensive or insulting language must be substantively and procedurally defined, and appropriately balance the complainant’s rights to due process and freedom of expression. Clarity around the legal justifications and limits of punishing insulting language by declaring a complaint inadmissible is essential for fair, predictable, and consistent access to justice at the international level for victims of human rights abuses.

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