March 17, 2017
Is it permissible for States to categorically exempt women, juveniles and the elderly from being sentenced to life in prison? How should the Court handle the threat that States will ‘level down’ protection after it finds that a given measure is discriminatory? Those were the questions facing the Court’s Grand Chamber as it reached its […]
February 28, 2017
Dear readers, We are happy to announce the results of our poll on the best and worst ECtHR judgment of 2016. For an overview of the shortlist of candidates, including a motivation for selecting them, see our previous blog post published on the occasion of the opening of the polls. In light of the recent […]
February 20, 2017
Guest post by Daniel Simons, Legal Officer for Freedom of Assembly, Expression and Information, Open Society Justice Initiative (New York) The unanimous Chamber judgment in Lashmankin and Others v. Russia, rendered on February 7th, is an important new star in the Article 11 firmament. It clarifies the law peaceful assemblies in a number of respects, […]
February 14, 2017
Guest post by Jonathan McCully, Legal officer at the Media Legal Defence Initiative, which supported the case, and Editor of Columbia Global Freedom of Expression On 9 February 2017, the European Court of Human Rights handed down an important judgment in Selmani and Ors v. The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Application No. 67259/14), a […]
February 09, 2017
By Corina Heri, Visiting Scholar at Ghent University It has been the ECtHR’s constant case-law that Article 12 ECHR, while enshrining the right to marry an opposite-sex spouse, does not protect a right to divorce. The fact that the Court has resolutely held on to that idea despite the modern-day legalization of divorce in the […]
February 07, 2017
Guest post by Dr. Vladislava Stoyanova, Lecturer and Postdoctoral Fellow, Faculty of Law, Lund University, Sweden (*) J. and Others v. Austria delivered by the Strasbourg Court on 17 January 2017 adds to the slowly developing body of case law under Article 4 of the ECHR (the right not to be subjected to slavery, servitude and forced […]
February 02, 2017
By Valeska David On 25 January 2017, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) heard oral pleadings in Garib v. the Netherlands. The case concerns the refusal of a housing permit to a single mother living on social welfare on account of legislation imposing minimum income requirements on persons wishing to […]
January 31, 2017
The Strasbourg Observers are launching the annual poll for best and worst European Court of Human Rights judgment, 2016 edition! This year, the pre-selection of nominees was particularly challenging. A diverse batch of 28 (!) judgments received nominations from our blogging team at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University. Ultimately, our internal voting process […]
January 27, 2017
In an astonishingly laconic judgment (available only in French), the Court found no violation in the case of a 12-year old who was wounded by an anti-personnel mine while herding his sheep. Facts and Ruling The facts in this case date back to the summer of 2003, in a Kurdish village in East Turkey, not […]
January 18, 2017
Guest post by Moritz Baumgärtel, lecturer and researcher at the Department of European and International Public Law at Tilburg University. Moritz recently defended his PhD at the Université libre de Bruxelles. His project was a part of the IAP research network “The Global Challenge of Human Rights Integration: Towards a Users’ Perspective”. On 17 November […]
January 10, 2017
Guest post by Denise Venturi, PhD Student in International Law, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Italy) and KU Leuven (Belgium) On 15 December 2016 the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) gave its much awaited ruling in the case Khlaifia and Others v Italy. The judgement follows a 2015 decision of the Second […]
December 20, 2016
Guest post by Gaurav Mukherjee[1] and James Wookey[2] On 30 November 2016, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) heard oral arguments in Bărbulescu v. Romania. The case was referred to the Grand Chamber on 6 June 2016, after a Chamber judgment delivered on 12 January 2016. The applicant sent private […]
December 15, 2016
In what is possibly one of the most important judgments of 2016, Paposhvili v. Belgium, the Grand Chamber has memorably reshaped its Article 3 case law on the expulsion of seriously ill migrants. In a unanimous judgment, the Court leaves behind the restrictive application of the high Article 3 threshold set in N. v. the […]
December 08, 2016
By Stijn Smet A few weeks ago, a Section of the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Armenian government had not exceeded its margin of appreciation by summarily dismissing senior civil servants who had voiced critical remarks on the democratic nature of the 2008 presidential elections in Armenia. The Court’s view on the […]
November 30, 2016
Guest post by M. Schaap-Rubio Imbers, PhD Candidate international public law, Erasmus School of Law On the 8th of November 2016, the ECtHR’s Grand Chamber delivered its judgment in Magyar Helsinki Bizottság v Hungary. The applicant NGO (Magyar Helsinki Bizottság) complained that the refusal of police departments to disclose information on the appointment of […]
November 23, 2016
I am most pleased to announce the publication, with Routledge, of my book Resolving Conflicts between Human Rights: The Judge’s Dilemma. The book is based on my PhD research. Its first 20-odd pages – including the entire introduction – can be consulted here. This should give interested readers a good idea of what the book […]
November 21, 2016
By Ellen Desmet, assistant professor of migration law at Ghent University. On 13 October 2016, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously found in B.A.C. v. Greece that the Greek state’s omission to decide on an asylum application during more than twelve years violated Article 8 as well as Article 13 in conjunction with Article […]
November 16, 2016
By Corina Heri, PhD candidate at the University of Zürich / Visiting Scholar at Ghent University On 27 October 2016, the Court published the Third Section’s decision in Kamenica and Others v. Serbia. That case concerns the alleged ill-treatment of 67 persons who fled Bosnia and Herzegovina during the conflict that broke out there in […]
October 31, 2016
Guest post by Benoit Dhondt, Belgian lawyer specialized in migration and refugee law. As a teaching assistant, he is also connected to the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University, more specifically its Human Rights and Migration Law Clinic. Several practitioners were disappointed with the road the ECtHR traveled in Khan v. Germany last year. With […]
October 25, 2016
Guest post by Denise Venturi, PhD Student in International Law, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Italy) and KU Leuven (Belgium) As has recently been noted in this blog, the case of O.M. v Hungary adds another tile to the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR) mosaic on vulnerability. The present blog post seeks to start from these […]