Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights: A Practitioner’s Handbook the case to the Grand Chamber.117 The President of the Chamber may, in exceptional circumstances, extend the time limit if sufficient cause is shown. Third-party observations need to be drafted in one of the official languages of the Court. They will be forwarded to the parties to the case, who will be entitled, subject to any conditions, including time-limits set by the President of the Chamber, to reply through written observations or, where appropriate, at the hearing. The purpose of an amicus curiae intervention is to assist the Court in its deliberations on a case, or a specific issue in a case. In this connection, many NGOs have expertise or specialist information on specific human rights issues relevant to the case in which they seek to intervene. In practice, most third-party interventions are submitted by NGOs. Such information or expertise may not always be within the reach of an applicant, his or her legal representative, or indeed of the Court. A prospective third party must specify in the request for leave to intervene what added value its intervention will have for the Court’s examination of the case. For example, an NGO with experience in the subject matter pertinent to the case in which it seeks to intervene could emphasise that experience. Similarly, an NGO with specialised knowledge of other human rights mechanisms may try to persuade the Court of the utility of a comparative legal analysis of a particular issue relevant to the case. In this connection it must be pointed out that the Court is frequently prepared to take account of case law of other international118 and domestic courts (occasionally even of courts of countries not parties to the Convention119) which may serve as guidance on issues which it has not yet had occasion to consider in its own jurisprudence. An example of a case in which third-party interventions played a role is Nachova and Others v. Bulgaria.120 The Court received third-party interventions from three non-governmental organisations: the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), INTERIGHTS and Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI). The ERRC’s submission informed the Court of incidents of ill-treatment and killing of Roma by law enforcement agents and private individuals. INTERIGHTS criticised the Court’s standard of beyond reasonable doubt as erecting insurmountable obstacles to establishing discrimination. The OSJI, for their part, commented on the obligation of States, in international and comparative law, to investigate 117 118 119 120 58 For issues relating to referral and relinquishment to the Grand Chamber see section 2.1.22. See e.g. Rantsev v. Cyprus and Russia, no. 25965/04, 7 January 2010, §§ 142 and 266, in which the third-party intervener as well as the Court referred to judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on the topic of human trafficking. See e.g. Christine Goodwin v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 28957/95, 11 July 2002, §§ 56 and 84, in which both, Liberty, as the third-party intervener, and the Court refereed to legislation in Australia and New Zealand when dealing on the topic of gender reassignment. Nachova and Others v. Bulgaria [GC], nos. 43577/98 and 43579/98, 6 July 2005, § 8.