March 20, 2020
In these disturbing times for all of us, we at the Ghent University’s Human Rights Centre are really looking forward to seeing all of you, the ECHR community, again once all of this is over. On 18-20 November 2020, we’re organizing a conference to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights, […]
March 18, 2020
This blogpost was written by Jernej Letnar Černič who is Associate Professor of Human Rights and Constitutional Law at the Faculty of Government and European Studies of the New University (Ljubljana/Kranj, Slovenia). He is co-author of the forthcoming book on “The Impact of European Institutions on the Rule of Law and Democracy: Slovenia and Beyond” […]
March 16, 2020
By Dr. Petra Gyöngyi (Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oslo, member of Judges under Stress – The Breaking Point of Judicial Institutions) On January 20, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rendered a final decision in the case of Magyar Kétfarkú Kutya Párt (MKKP) v Hungary. The case concerned […]
March 11, 2020
By Fleur van Leeuwen (Boğaziçi University) ‘The legal system is designed to protect men from the superior power of the state but not to protect women or children from the superior power of men.’ It is a quote from Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman in an article on domestic violence in the Guardian last weekend. The […]
March 05, 2020
Judith Vermeulen is a doctoral researcher and a member of the Law & Technology research group, the Human Rights Centre and PIXLES at Ghent University. On January 30, 2020, in the case of Breyer v. Germany, the European Court of Human Rights ruled by six votes to one that the – legally required – indiscriminate […]
March 02, 2020
Dear readers, About a month ago, we presented you with a shortlist of candidates for the awards of best and worst ECtHR judgments of 2019 (see our previous blog post). We would like to thank everybody who participated in the vote. It is our pleasure to announce the results of the poll today. In the […]
February 27, 2020
Dr. Gamze Erdem Türkelli is a Post-Doctoral Fellow Fundamental Research of Research Foundation (FWO) Flanders (File Number 12Q1719N) at the Law and Development Research Group, University of Antwerp Faculty of Law. The NGO Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Skopje (HCHR) brought a case before the ECtHR on behalf of L.R., an eight-year-old child with […]
February 25, 2020
By Ruben Wissing (Ghent University) On 13 February, the Grand Chamber rendered a long awaited judgment, meandering over more than one hundred pages, in the N.D. and N.T case on the push-back practices against migrants at the Moroccan-Spanish border fence surrounding the city of Melilla – the so-called devoluciones en caliente or ‘hot returns’ by […]
February 20, 2020
By Jasper Krommendijk (Radboud University, the Netherlands) On 13 February 2020, the ECtHR found for the fourth time ever a violation of Article 6(1) ECHR for a failure of the highest national court to give proper reasons for its refusal to refer preliminary questions to the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in Sanofi […]
February 07, 2020
Ingrida Milkaite is a PhD researcher in the research group Law & Technology at Ghent University, Belgium. She is working on the research project ‘A children’s rights perspective on privacy and data protection in the digital age’ (Ghent University, Special Research Fund) and is a member of the Human Rights Centre at the Faculty of Law and […]
January 31, 2020
By Prof Kanstantsin Dzehtsiarou (University of Liverpool), Editor-in-Chief of the European Convention on Human Rights Law Review It has been discussed on various levels that weak enforcement of the ECtHR judgments is a major drawback of the whole system. The lack of political will of the governments of the Contracting Parties to the Convention to […]
January 29, 2020
Dear readers, As the Grand Chamber made clear in the (in)famous Lautsi case, “the decision whether or not to perpetuate a tradition falls in principle within the margin of appreciation”. Exercising our discretion in this respect, we hereby decide to perpetuate our tradition of celebrating the start of the New Year with the launch of […]
January 24, 2020
The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, better known as the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), was opened for signature in Rome on 4 November 1950. The Convention will thus be 70 next autumn. Ghent University’s Human Rights Centre wishes to take the opportunity of this anniversary to take stock […]
January 23, 2020
By Dr. Ingrid Leijten, Assistant Professor at the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law at Leiden University On December 20th of last year, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled in the case of Urgenda v. de Staat der Nederlanden, confirming the finding of the Court of Appeal that the State violates articles 2 and 8 ECHR […]
January 17, 2020
Beril Önder: PhD Candidate, University of Strasbourg (Institut de Recherches Carré de Malberg) and Ghent University (Human Rights Centre) The case of Razvozzhayev v. Russia and Ukraine and Udaltsov v. Russia[1] concerned the conviction of two men for organising “mass disorder” in a political rally at Bolotnaya Square in Moscow on 6 May 2012. The […]
January 08, 2020
By Valérie Junod and Olivier Simon On November 26. 2019, the ECtHR issued a 6 to 1 judgment finding that Russia had not breached the right of the complainants when it denied them access to methadone and buprenorphine (these two medicines are hereafter abbreviated to M/B) for treating their duly diagnosed opioid dependence syndrome (ODS). […]
December 23, 2019
By Dr. Vladislava Stoyanova (Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Lund University) The ECtHR has been for a long time criticized for its approach to immigration detention that diverts from the generally applicable principles to deprivation of liberty in other contexts. As Cathryn Costello has observed in her article Immigration Detention: The Ground beneath our Feet, […]
December 19, 2019
By Ronan Ó Fathaigh and Dirk Voorhoof In Tagiyev and Huseynov v. Azerbaijan, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously held that the conviction and imprisonment of Azerbaijani journalist Rafig Nazir oglu Tagiye, and editor Samir Sadagat oglu Huseynov, for incitement to religious hatred, violated their right to freedom of expression under Article 10 ECHR. […]
December 16, 2019
By Massimo Frigo (Senior Legal Adviser of the International Commission of Jurists) On 14 October, the Supreme Court (Tribunal Supremo) of Spain convicted 12 people in connection with their part in the organisation on 1 October 2017 of a referendum on Catalonian independence, that was conducted despite having been declared illegal by the Constitutional Court. […]
December 12, 2019
By Emre Turkut (PhD Researcher at Ghent University and DAAD Visiting Fellow at the Hertie School in Berlin) On 10 December 2019, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or Court) delivered its much-awaited decision in the case of Osman Kavala v. Turkey, an application lodged by a human rights defender and philanthropist to challenge […]