Legal status of an individual in international litigation

Abstract

The article is devoted to the theoretical and practical issues of the legal status of an individual in international courts and tribunals. The author investigates how natural persons participate in international litigation in order to understand the evolving status of an individual in the international legal order in general. The approach is based on inclusive participation, and an overall tendency to widen locus standi and locus standi in judicia is stressed. The author analyses the status of a claimant, a defendant, other participants, such as witnesses and victims, covering different international jurisdictions, in which an individual has a procedural role – human protective mechanisms, administrative tribunals, international criminal tribunals – and even addresses the International Court of Justice case law (in which an individual formally has no access to any procedural status) in order to unveal and prove the humanization of international procedural law.