The police and the human right to peaceful assembly

Abstract

Given the importance of public gatherings for functioning democracies and their power to trigger far-reaching change processes in the political sphere, the right to freedom of peaceful assembly is particularly prone to infringements. The provisions concerning this human right, which are enshrined in various binding international and regional human rights treaties, have been construed and underpinned by a significant body of case law and additional standard-setting documents, thus further defining the scope of protection of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. However, especially in light of the dynamics of public gatherings as, for example, large-scale political manifestations, it remains crucial to transfer the relevant human rights standards to appropriate crowd management measures. This is where the police come in. Their role and function are twofold: respecting and protecting the right to freedom of peaceful assembly are key features of police professionalism. In order to accomplish this, the police should take into consideration a broad range of interrelated influential factors. This chapter examines selected elements of case law and other standard-setting documents pertaining to the right to freedom of peaceful assembly with particular relevance for the police, before approaching the question of how to implement the requirements emerging from the regulatory framework by exploring good practices in policing public assemblies, thus linking the theoretical with the practical perspective. It concludes that in light of ever-changing sociopolitical conditions, police services have to cope with adapting their strategies and tactics to new developments.