In the Fall of 2025, Ninveh Mansour (JD 2026), Ayaka Kimura (JD 2026), and Sigrid Martinez (JD 2027), students of the International Human Rights Practicum, continued litigating an individual communication the IHRC brought before the UN Human Rights Committee in 2023 regarding barriers to participation in elections. The communication was brought on behalf of Mr. Marco Cappato, an Italian political leader who was barred from participating in the political elections of 2022.
The communication argues that Italy’s refusal to accept electronic signatures for electoral candidate lists—while permitting them for referenda—imposes arbitrary and unjustified restrictions on political participation in violation of Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The communication further challenges Italy’s claim that the case is inadmissible for failure to exhaust domestic remedies, and instead argues that under Human Rights Committee precedent, the exhaustion requirement under Article 5(2)(b) of the Optional Protocol does not apply when remedies are unavailable, ineffective, unduly prolonged, or futile, as it was in the present case.