Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights: A Practitioner’s Handbook decisions and judgments as well as the decisions of the Commission and applies them to similar situations. Furthermore, as pointed out above, pursuant to Article 32 of the Convention, the Court’s jurisdiction extends to all matters concerning the interpretation and application of the Convention and the Protocols. As will be seen in subsequent parts of this Guide, there is a very large body of case law on Article 3 of the Convention. For example, the Court has read into this Article a positive obligation – which is not apparent from the wording of the Article itself – obliging Contracting Parties to carry out effective investigations into allegations of ill-treatment.42 At first sight, Article 3 appears only to contain an obligation that a State ensure that its authorities refrain from inflicting ill-treatment, i.e. a negative obligation. Likewise, what constitutes torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment can only be gathered from the case law. Indeed, it would have been practically impossible for Article 3 to contain an exhaustive list of every conceivable form of treatment it prohibits. For the reasons mentioned above, in every decision and judgment adopted by the Court, there will be references to, and quotations from, previous decisions and judgments of the Convention institutions. It is imperative, therefore, that practitioners acquaint themselves with the Convention case law in order to be able to refer to pertinent decisions and judgments in support of their applications. The case law of the Court and of the Commission can be searched with the help of the HUDOC database which is available on the Court’s website.43 In a number of Council of Europe member States, important decisions and judgments are translated into the national language. Finally, it should be noted that the Court occasionally refers to decisions and judgments of other international human rights mechanisms and benefits from their experience. For example, in its judgments in the case of Opuz v. Turkey44 the Court made references to the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on the issue of forced disappearances and on the issue of jurisdiction, respectively. Similarly, the Court’s judgments also make references to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Human Rights Committee.45 Of relevance for the purposes of the present Guide is the fact that the Court also 42 43 44 45 32 See section 10.2.2 below. HUDOC available at: http://www.echr.coe.int/Pages/home.aspx?p=caselaw/HUDOC&c= (last visited 23 July 2014). Opuz v. Turkey, no. 33401/02, 9 June 2009, §§ 83–86. See e.g. Hirst v. the United Kingdom (No.2) [GC], no. 74025/01, 6 October 2005, § 27.