Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights: A Practitioner’s Handbook Having said this, in situations of forced disappearance the Court still requires relatives of disappeared persons to lodge an application “within, at most, several years of the incident.”515 In addition, if there were any domestic investigations into the disappearances, the relatives may wait some years longer until hope of progress of domestic proceedings has evaporated. Where more than ten years have elapsed since the disappearance, applicants have to show that there were some advances being achieved to justify further delay in going to Strasbourg.516 d) Concluding Remarks It is for the applicant to provide the Court with information that enables it to establish whether he or she has complied with the six (four)-month rule. Failure to provide such information may result in the application being declared inadmissible. For this reason, it is recommended that applicants enclose with the application a photocopy of the envelope – with a legible postal stamp – in which the final domestic court decision was sent to them or any other document showing the date of service of the final domestic court decision. In case of doubt about the effectiveness of a particular remedy, the jurisprudence should be consulted carefully to check whether the remedy in question has been examined before. Another possible course of action is to introduce the application while at the same time exhausting the doubtful remedy and keeping the Court informed of developments. Obviously, if the remedy in question has been exhausted before the Court examines the application, it should be informed about the outcome in order to eliminate the risk of the application being declared inadmissible for non-exhaustion. If, on the other hand, the Court examines the application before the remedy is exhausted and declares the case inadmissible for non-exhaustion of that remedy, the applicant may bring a new application once he or she has exhausted the remedy, since the domestic decision obtained will be regarded as relevant new information within the meaning of Article 35 § 2 (b) of the Convention. If an applicant waits to lodge the application until a doubtful remedy has been exhausted, and if the Court subsequently rules that the remedy was in fact an ineffective one which did not require exhaustion, the application may well be declared inadmissible for non-respect of the six(four)-month rule, with no possibility for the applicant to lodge a new application based on the same facts. Even if the domestic track is likely ineffective, proceeding to exhaust the domestic remedy while concurrently introducing an application with the Court will eliminate the risk that the time limit will have expired should the Court consider that the remedy at issue does require exhaustion. 515 Varnava and Others v. Turkey [GC], nos. 16064/90, 16065/90, 16066/90, 16068/90, 16069/90, 16070/90, 16071/90, 16072/90 and 16073/90, 18 September 2009, § 166. 516 Ibid. 140