Human Rights Potential of Deputies in the Russian Federation

This article analyzes the human rights competences of deputies of all levels of state authorities in the Russian Federation: federal parliamentarians (including senators), deputies of legislative (representative) authorities of subjects of the Russian Federation, and deputies of local representative bodies. The human rights competences of deputies are delimited from human rights powers of the Parliament. The article justifies the use of the term “competence” regarding the human rights activities of deputies. It introduces the division into individual and group human rights competences. The specifics of the human rights competences of deputies is noted, it is shown through the peculiarities of the methods to obtain and keep information about violations of rights and freedoms. The correlation between the method of electing deputies and their potential as human rights advocates is revealed. The following human rights competences of deputies are analyzed: initiating judicial proceedings (in the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and courts of general jurisdiction); sending deputy appeals (requests for information, deputy requests and demands to eliminate violations of the law, rights and freedoms of citizens); visiting bodies and organizations by a deputy. Conclusions are drawn about the incompleteness of the human rights competences of deputies, the imperfection of the legal mechanism for their implementation, the absence of many important human rights competences of deputies in the subjects of the Russian Federation and especially deputies of the municipal level. In this regard, some novelties are proposed: endowing federal parliamentarians with individual competence to appeal to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation and the similar but already group competence of deputies at the level of the subject of the Russian Federation; endowing all deputies with the right to appeal to the courts of general jurisdiction to protect the rights and freedoms of citizens and organizations; unification of the institution of deputy appeals, including specification regulating the institution of the deputy’s claim to eliminate violations of the law, subjective rights and freedoms; expansion of the number of organizations available for deputies to visit by involving entities that implement publicly significant functions.

Keywords: deputy, competence, human rights, deputy inquiry, judicial protection, parliament, control, human rights activities