Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights: A Practitioner’s Handbook accounting for over half of the pending cases.56 The Filtering Section’s function is to carry out thorough, accurate and immediate sifting of cases to ensure that all applications are allocated to the appropriate judicial body. The Filtering Section can considerably reduce the time taken to respond to applicants as well as the backlog of unexamined cases. The assigned case lawyer will carry out an examination of the file and at this stage he or she may ask the applicant to submit further documents, information, or clarifications. Any time limits indicated by the Registry for submission of additional information must be complied with and if there are difficulties in obtaining the requested information, the Registry should be informed and an extension of the time limit should be sought. 2.1.4 Expediting Cases: The Court’s Priority Policy According to Rule 41 of the Rules of Court, the Court can determine the order in which cases are to be dealt with. In doing so, the Court shall have regard to the importance and urgency of the issues raised on the basis of the following criteria:57 1. Urgent applications (in particular risk to life or health of the applicant, other circumstances linked to the personal or family situation of the applicant, particularly where the wellbeing of a child is at issue, application of Rule 39 of the Rules of Court); 2. Applications raising questions capable of having an impact on the effectiveness of the Convention system (in particular a structural or endemic situation that the Court has not yet examined, pilot-judgment procedure) or applications raising an important question of general interest (in particular a serious question capable of having major implications for domestic legal systems or for the European system), inter-State cases; 3. Applications that, on their face, raise as main complaints issues under Articles 2, 3, 4 or 5 § 1 of the Convention (‘core rights’), irrespective of whether they are repetitive, and which have given rise to direct threats to the physical integrity and dignity of human beings. 4. Potentially well-founded applications based on other Articles; 5. Applications raising issues already dealt with in a pilot/leading judgment (‘repetitive cases’); 6. Applications identified as giving rise to a problem of admissibility; and 56 57 42 European Court of Human Rights, “Filtering Section Progress Report”, available at: http://www.echr. coe.int/Documents/Filtering_Section_ENG.pdf> (last visited 23 July 2014). European Court of Human Rights, “The Court’s Priority Policy”, available at: http://www.echr.coe. int/Documents/Priority%20policy_ENG.pdf