The Definition of Peaceful Assembly

This chapter focuses on the manner in which two international human rights bodies have recently defined the term “peaceful assembly” and thus the scope of protection afforded by the right to peacefully assembly. These are the Human Rights Committee, which dedicated a recent general comment – General Comment No. 37 (2020) – to the right to peaceful assembly, and the Venice Commission and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR), which published an update to its Guidelines on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly in 2019. It will survey and analyze the positions adopted by the Human Rights Committee and ODIHR/Venice Commission on key aspects of the definition of the term “peaceful assembly”, and discuss the implications of the interpretative choices made by the Committee and ODIHR/Venice Commission, as far as they concern the scope of protection afforded to the right to peaceful assembly. The chapter starts by considering the relationship between the associative, expressive and political components of the right to peaceful assembly, and moves on to describe specific interpretative choices relating to the purposeful gathering requirement, as well as specific issues relating to online assemblies and conditions for “peacefulness”.