Around the world: great marches and great principles

On 16 August 1819, in Manchester, tens of thousands of people gather to demand parliamentary reform. The cavalry charge that disperses the crowd kills around fifteen and injures hundreds: the Peterloo massacre. The government answers with restrictive laws, but the outrage feeds the movement that leads to the 1832 reform.

Chartism (1830s-1850s) gets millions of people to sign petitions for a wider franchise. Most of its demands would enter law in the following decades.

On 3 March 1913, a large procession for women’s right to vote marches in Washington, the day before the president’s inauguration. In the United Kingdom as in the United States, years of demonstrations, petitions and civil disobedience precede winning the vote.

From March to April 1930, Gandhi and his companions, joined along the way by thousands of people, walk about 390 kilometres to Dandi to protest the British salt tax. The non-violent action draws the world’s attention and becomes a model for other movements.

On 28 August 1963 the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom gathers about 250,000 people, and Martin Luther King delivers his “I have a dream” speech. In March 1965 the Selma to Montgomery marches, marked by the violence of “Bloody Sunday”, help bring about the Voting Rights Act in August of the same year.

In August 1980 the strikes at the Gdańsk shipyards lead to the recognition of the free trade union Solidarity. In August 1989 the “Baltic Way” gathers about two million people from Tallinn to Vilnius. In autumn 1989 the Monday gatherings in Leipzig are among the mobilisations that precede the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948, article 20) and then the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (article 21) recognise the right of peaceful assembly. The European Convention (article 11), the African Charter (article 11) and the American Convention (article 15) protect it regionally.

General comment no. 37 (2020) of the UN Human Rights Committee explains how to read this right. It remains very unevenly respected: written law does not guarantee its application.