January 05, 2016
By Marina van Riel, Resident Fellow, Open Society Justice Initiative, New York (*) On 1 December 2015, the European Court of Human Rights released a judgment in the case of Cengiz and Others v. Turkey. The main question put before the Court was whether the blocking of the popular video-sharing website YouTube constituted a violation […]
December 28, 2015
By Eva Brems In the Grand Chamber judgment of SAS v France (2014) the European Court of Human Rights held that France’s ban on face covering in public could be justified under article 9 ECHR as a proportionate measure for the aim of guaranteeing ‘le vivre ensemble’ (living together). Given the storm of protest that […]
December 23, 2015
By Paul De Hert and Pedro Cristobal Bocos (Vrije Universiteit Brussels) The judgment of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Roman Zakharov v. Russia last December 4, 2015 is part of the growing concern that some international human rights protection bodies have developed in the area of digital rights. This […]
December 15, 2015
By Corina Heri On 26 November 2015, the ECtHR published the Fifth Section’s judgment in Annen v. Germany. The majority in that case found a violation of the applicant’s freedom of expression under Article 10 ECHR by an injunction that prohibited him from distributing anti-abortion leaflets outside a day clinic and from publishing the names […]
December 07, 2015
By Lieselot Verdonck, doctoral researcher at the Human Rights Centre (Ghent University) and fellow of the Research Foundation – Flanders (Belgium). Özel & Others v. Turkey neatly fits into established case law of the European Court regarding human rights violations in which companies are involved. This is precisely the reason why the judgment may disappoint […]
December 02, 2015
By Ella Rutter and Jasmine Rayée, students of the Human Rights Law Clinic at the Faculty of Law of Ghent University. On 15 October 2015, in the case of Kudrevičius and Others v. Lithuania, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered its first Grand Chamber judgment on the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. […]
November 27, 2015
By Eva Brems On 26 November, the Court added a new chapter to its ‘headscarf’ jurisprudence, upholding the non-renewal of a contract in a public hospital on the ground of the applicant’s refusal to take off her headscarf. The case in brief 15 years ago, in December 2000, the applicant, who had been working for […]
November 25, 2015
By Rebecca Deruiter, PhD Researcher at the Institute for International Research on Criminal Policy (IRCP), Ghent University[1] In recent years, the case of Farid Bamouhammed has been covered frequently by Belgian media, characterizing him as notoriously unmanageable and resulting in the widespread used nickname of Farid ‘Le Fou’. After numerous judicial proceedings, by both Farid […]
November 23, 2015
By Fleur van Leeuwen, LL.M. Ph.D., Dutch human rights researcher, based in Istanbul Turkey. On 29 September 2015 the international organisation Human Rights in Childbirth received a letter from the deputy registrar of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or Court). They were informed that the President of the Grand […]
November 18, 2015
By Stijn Smet The Human Rights Centre of Ghent University has submitted a joint third party intervention with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Maina Kiai, in the ECtHR cases of Mahammad Majidli v. Azerbaijan (no. 3) and three other applications. All four cases concern […]
November 12, 2015
By Dirk Voorhoof * The Grand Chamber’s judgment delivered on 10 November 2015 in Couderc and Hachette Filipacchi Associés v. France elaborates on the appropriate standard for privacy and the media under European human rights law. In essence, the Court discussed the public-interest value of a disputed article published in the magazine Paris Match, revealing […]
November 09, 2015
In the recent case of Konstantin Stefanov, the Strasbourg Court examined the acceptability of a fine (the equivalent of EUR 260) imposed on a lawyer, appointed ex officio by a domestic court, for declining to represent a defendant from the viewpoint of Article 1 Protocol 1. The Court did not find a violation of this […]
October 26, 2015
By Dirk Voorhoof * Recently, the Council of Europe Task Force for Freedom of Expression and Media published a book under the title “Journalism at risk. Threats, challenges and perspectives”. Since a Grand Chamber judgment of the European Court of Human Rights of 20 October 2015, a new threat for journalistic freedom has obviously emerged, […]
October 22, 2015
By Ronan Ó Fathaigh The European Court’s First Section has unanimously held that a protestor’s arrest and conviction for failing to obey a police order violated his Article 11 right to freedom of assembly, despite the demonstration being unlawful. The First Section’s opinion in Mammadov v. Azerbaijan tackled the difficult issue of how police officers […]
October 19, 2015
By Dirk Voorhoof * On 17 December 2013 the European Court of Human Rights had ruled by five votes to two that Switzerland had violated the right to freedom of expression by convicting Doğu Perinçek, chairman of the Turkish Workers’ Party, for publicly denying the existence of the genocide against the Armenian people (see […]
October 08, 2015
Guest post by Natasa Mavronicola, Lecturer in Law at Queen’s University Belfast. The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights recently delivered an important judgment on Article 3 ECHR in the case of Bouyid v Belgium. In Bouyid, the Grand Chamber was called upon to consider whether slaps inflicted on a juvenile and […]
October 01, 2015
By Stijn Smet This Monday, 28 September 2015, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights overruled the Chamber judgment in Bouyid v. Belgium (see our post on the Chamber ruling here). The Grand Chamber found a violation of art. 3 ECHR on the substantive aspect of the case, ruling by a clear […]
September 28, 2015
I’m happy to announce the publication of my article “Strengthening the Protection of Human Rights of Persons Living in Poverty under the ECHR” in the September edition of Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights. In my article, which could hardly be any more topical than in today’s austerity-struck Europe, I address questions such as: what is […]
September 24, 2015
Few judgments have sparked more criticism than N. v. the United Kingdom. The high Article 3 threshold set in the case of a seriously ill woman expelled to Uganda where she died shortly after her return has been criticized both inside and outside the Court. Following what some considered a missed opportunity in S.J. v. […]
September 16, 2015
This guest post was written by Giuseppe Zago, Researcher of Comparative Sexual Orientation Law, Leiden University (*) Last 21 July, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Oliari and others v. Italy had once again the opportunity to analyze the status of same-sex couples wishing to marry or enter into a legally recognized partnership. […]