Petition is addressed to: Council of Europe

Due to Covid 19, the European Court of Human Rights took exceptional measures as of 16 March 2020 to extend the deadline to lodge an appeal to the Court by 3 months to make it 9 months instead of the usual 6 months for people whose 6 month deadline to appeal fell within the time window of 16 March 2020-15 June 2020.

This was a well deserved extension given that people would have difficulty to lodge applications due to the Corona pandemic. https://echr.coe.int/Pages/home.aspx?p=applicants&c=

However, the Court did not take into account that lockdown in some parts of the world started earlier than 16 March 2020 or that even prior to the lockdowns, people's lives have been severely affected due to the pandemic, which would have caused people to miss the deadline to file an appeal on time.

In some regions in Italy the lockdown was enacted on 21 February 2020 and in some part of the world on 23 January 2020. Also, in some regions, such as in South Korea, people who detected positive were quarantined much earlier than the 16 March 2020 date chosen by the Court to grant an extension. People in all these regions also deserve a fair chance at the European Court of Human Rights and should be included in the extension of the deadline to file an appeal at the European Court of Human Rights.

I urge you to support this petition to grant an extension of the deadline to lodge an appeal to anybody whose 6 month deadline fell within the time window of 23 January 2020 - 15 March 2020, and are not considered in the current extension.