Viraaj
This is the first post of many that will detail the glaring data issues within HUDOC, the official database for the European Court of Human Rights. Arguably the world's most important human rights court.
I emailed the head of HUDOC to detail the numerous issues I found while creating My-Rights.info, a Prototype Funded project, that aims to make human rights case law accessible. The creation of this project revealed significant data labeling and management issues within the database that severely undermine its reliability and usability.
After identifying these issues, nearly a year ago, I reached out to the administrators of HUDOC via email, offering a detailed list of data management issues I had identified, with an offer to help highlight and possibly work towards rectifying these issues. Despite an initial acknowledgment, there has been a disheartening lack of meaningful engagement or action from their side, leaving the outlined problems unaddressed and continuing to compromise the database's reliability for legal research and advocacy.
Unfortunately for some victims of human rights violations, they will quickly realise that when they enter their case on HUDOC, they will be met with a blank screen. This issue has been identified for at least 50 unique cases.
A serious concern as the absence of case texts renders the database incomplete, and significantly hampers the ability of legal professionals and researchers to garner insights from past rulings. The missing texts are not only a hindrance to comprehensive legal research but also a stark indicator of the data mismanagement within HUDOC.
The following is a sample of some of these cases:
