December 18, 2014
By Lourdes Peroni At a time when family life takes increasingly diverse forms in Europe and elsewhere, the recent judgment in Senchishak v. Finland clings to the ideal of parents and minor children as the yardstick to determine the existence of family life at Strasbourg. The Court declared the complaint under Article 8 inadmissible, after finding […]
December 10, 2014
This guest post was written by Rebecca Deruiter. PhD Researcher at the Institute for International Research on Criminal Policy (IRCP), Ghent University [1] In its recent ruling in Vasilescu v. Belgium, the European Court of Human Rights convicted the Belgian state of inhuman and degrading treatment violating Article 3, for the deplorable detention conditions during […]
December 08, 2014
This guest post was written by Cedric De Koker, Phd Researcher, IRCP, Ghent University. With its judgment in the case of Jaloud v. the Netherlands, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has added another chapter to its growing body of case law relating to the extra-territorial application of the European […]
December 03, 2014
This guest post was written by Constantin Cojocariu, human rights lawyer[1] Recently, I got involved in a case pending before the European Court of Human Rights – N. v. Romania – on behalf of a man diagnosed with schizophrenia, who claimed that his detention for 14 years in high security psychiatric hospitals has been unlawful. […]
December 01, 2014
This guest post was written by Nesa Zimmermann, Ph.D. candidate and teaching assistant at the University of Geneva, Switzerland (*) The Court’s recent ruling in Tarakhel v. Switzerland became famous almost before it was delivered. The case has received strong media attention, and some claimed the judgment signified “the end of the Dublin system”. However, […]
November 28, 2014
We are proud to announce – on very short notice – an exciting event on whistleblowing in Europe, organized in Ghent by our Human Rights Centre colleagues Dirk Voorhoof and Flutura Kusari. The event links in neatly with Dirk Voorhoof’s recent post on this blog on the ECtHR judgment of Matúz v. Hungary. Below, you […]
November 25, 2014
by Dirk Voorhoof (UGent) A recent judgment of the European Court of Human Rights once more illustrates the need for strict scrutiny by the Strasbourg Court in order to keep up the standards of media freedom and the right of freedom of expression and information in European pluralistic democracies. In the judgment of Matúz v. […]
November 20, 2014
By Stijn Smet On 28 October 2014, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the numerous convictions of Mr. Stephen Peter Gough – better known as “the naked rambler” – for insisting on appearing naked in public at all times, did not violate Mr. Gough’s freedom of expression. Quite a bit of ink has […]
November 17, 2014
By Ronan Ó Fathaigh In the summer of 2009, the Irish supreme court issued a landmark opinion, overturning an order issued against a newspaper to answer questions about a leaked document it had received from an anonymous source. However, four months later, the same supreme court ruled that the newspaper was required to pay the […]
November 12, 2014
By Flutura Kusari * and Dirk Voorhoof ** In Erla Hlynsdottir v. Iceland (no. 2), an Icelandic journalist had been convicted for defamation after reporting that the director of a Christian rehabilitation centre and his wife had been involved in sex games with patients of the centre. The European Court of Human Rights found a […]
November 06, 2014
This guest post was written by Isabelle Van Hiel, PhD Researcher and Teaching Assistant at the social law section of the Department of Criminology, Criminal Law and Social Law of the Law Faculty of Ghent University. In two recent cases of 2 October 2014 the ECtHR had to decide on the freedom of association of […]
November 04, 2014
Co-authored by Yousra Benfquih* and Saïla Ouald Chaib** As in many other countries in Europe, the wearing of religious signs has been the topic of heated debate in Belgium. This has been the case for public servants, teachers, employees in private firms and the wearing of religious signs by pupils in school. It is the […]
October 30, 2014
By Lourdes Peroni Readers familiar with the Court’s case law on family life and immigration will know that applicants’ chances of success are slim if family life was formed at a time when those involved knew that the migration status of one of them was such that their family life would be precarious in the […]
October 23, 2014
Valeska David is a PhD Researcher at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University and a member of the Research Network “The Global Challenge of Human Rights Integration: Towards a Users’ Perspective.” We have all heard about the so-called paradigm shift brought about by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The social […]
October 17, 2014
This guest post was written by Helena De Vylder, Ph.D. researcher at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University. Her research focuses on admissibility criteria in regional human rights systems. Mocanu and others v Romania fits in a series of cases in which the Strasbourg Court needed to deal with grave and large-scale human rights […]
October 14, 2014
This guest post was written by Cedric De Koker, Phd Researcher, Institute for International Research on Criminal Policy (IRCP), Ghent University. On the 16th September 2014, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rendered its judgment in the landmark case of Hassan v. United Kingdom. The case concerned the deprivation of […]
October 10, 2014
This guest post was written by Yousra Benfquih, FWO aspirant, PhD Fellow Research Foundation Flanders at the University of Antwerp. In the case of Mansur Yalçın v. Turkey, 14 Turkish nationals living in Istanbul who are adherents of the Alevi faith, complained before the Court that the way in which the religion and ethics class […]
October 02, 2014
This guest blog post was written by Frederic Bernard, Lecturer at the University of Geneva, Global Studies Institute, and Attorney-at-law admitted to the Geneva Bar. The fragmentation of international law has been for some time the subject of in-depth academic and expert studies, as exemplified, for instance, by the report dedicated to this topic on […]
September 25, 2014
We are happy to announce the publication of a new book entitled “The Experiences of Face Veil Wearers in Europe and the Law” edited by prof. Eva Brems and published by Cambridge University Press. This book, unique in its kind, unites empirical research on women wearing face veils in Europe and commentary of scholars of […]
September 16, 2014
I am very pleased to announce the Symposium ‘(How) Should the European Court of Human Rights Resolve Conflicts between Human Rights’, which will be organised by the Human Rights Centre in Ghent on 16 October 2014. The event will bring together an outstanding roster of European scholars and experts in the field: Samantha Besson, Sébastien […]