October 20, 2016
Guest post by Els Schipaanboord, LL.M. – PhD Researcher at the Institute for International Research on Criminal Policy, Ghent University On 6 September 2016, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Belgium once more, after 22 previous convictions, for its internment policy. This safety measure, under the Belgian law referred to as ‘internering’, aims to […]
October 18, 2016
Guest post by Duygu Çiçek – LL.M. in Human Rights from the University of Edinburgh (2015-2016) Turkey’s recent attempted coup of the 15th of July exposed various discussions and conspiracy theories about the reasons behind the coup as well as future concerns regarding political dynamics at the domestic and international level. This contribution, however, will […]
October 13, 2016
By Corina Heri, PhD candidate at the University of Zürich / Visiting Scholar at Ghent University The concept of vulnerability has had wide-ranging effects for the Strasbourg jurisprudence, although the European Court of Human Rights, in what appears to be a matter of conscious choice,[1] has never defined it. Instead, the Court has opted for […]
October 10, 2016
By Malu Beijer, researcher Radboud University Nijmegen The concept of positive obligations has become a regular feature of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ever since the classic cases of Marckx v. Belgium, Airey v. Ireland and X. and Y. v. the Netherlands. The ECtHR has made very clear in […]
October 06, 2016
Guest post written by Dr. Vladislava Stoyanova, Lecturer and Postdoctoral Fellow, Faculty of Law, Lund University Author of Human Trafficking and Slavery Reconsidered. Conceptual Limits and States’ Positive Obligations in Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Currently working on a postdoctoral project entitled ‘Positive Obligations under the ECHR’ I certainly agree with Dr. Laurens Lavrysen’s assessment […]
October 04, 2016
I am proud to announce the publication of my PhD “Human Rights in a Positive State – Rethinking the Relationship between Positive and Negative Obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights”. In my PhD, I have exhaustively studied the concept of positive obligations in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, […]
September 20, 2016
By Saïla Ouald Chaib The day the opinion of Advocate General Kokott in the case of Achbita v. G4S came out, my phone did not stop ringing. The press wanted to know if this opinion really meant that employers could refuse to hire women wearing a hijab. The fact that even journalists sounded surprised speaks […]
September 16, 2016
By Eva Brems What is at Stake? The Hijab Wearer as an Outlaw The corporate anti-headscarf policy that is challenged in the Achbita case has to be situated in the context of a country that has seen headscarf bans expand like an oil stain from one sector to the next. This results in a situation […]
September 14, 2016
By Emmanuelle Bribosia[1] and Isabelle Rorive[2], Université libre de Bruxelles The Achbita and the Bougnaoui cases give a first opportunity to the European Court of Justice to address religious discrimination. Since the adoption of the anti-discrimination directives after the Amsterdam treaty, the Court ruled on a significant number of cases, mostly on discrimination based on […]
September 12, 2016
By Matthias Mahlmann, University of Zürich Differences and Common Ground This is legal deliberation with an edge: the two Opinions of Advocate General Kokott in the case of Achbita (C-157/15) and of Advocate General Sharpston in the case of Bougnaoui (C-188/15) come to opposing results though dealing with cases that are, in many respects, very […]
September 08, 2016
By Lucy Vickers, Oxford Brookes University In this post, I focus on two issues of note regarding the divergent reasoning of the Advocates General. The first is the question of whether or not religion is immutable, and whether the answer to that question is helpful in determining the extent to which religion should be protected […]
September 07, 2016
By Eva Brems The Kokott-Sharpston Standoff at the Threshold to the Summer of Shame In France and Belgium, the summer of 2016 will be remembered as the summer of the burkini debates. Numerous French municipalities banned Islamic swimgear that covers the body, and in Belgium, majority politicians called for a similar ‘burkini’ ban. The world […]
September 05, 2016
Guest post by Cedric De Koker, Phd Researcher, IRCP, Ghent University. On 21 June 2016, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) rendered its judgment in the case of Al-Dulimi and Montana Management Inc. v. Switzerland (no. 5809/08). At issue was a potential norm conflict between the obligations stemming from a […]
September 01, 2016
Guest post by Ruth M. Mestre i Mestre, Human Rights Institute, University of Valencia. The G.J. v. Spain Decision (App. no. 59172/12) shows many of the problems victims of human trafficking encounter to access justice. It is, sadly, one of those cases where formalities swallow justice, since the outcome could have been totally different had […]
August 29, 2016
By Helena De Vylder Once again, in the decision in Bulgarian Helsinki Committee v Bulgaria, the ECtHR had the opportunity to rule on the legal standing of an NGO when de facto representing two mentally disabled adolescents, who died in an institution. The ECtHR applied the criteria it established in Centre for Legal Resources on […]
August 24, 2016
Guest post by Catherine Van de Heyning (Dr. LL.M.), researcher at the University of Antwerp and visiting professor of criminal law at UC Leuven-Limburg. In the Buzadji v. the Republic of Moldova judgment of 5 July 2016 the ECtHR took the opportunity to clarify its case law on the requirement on a judge to give […]
August 19, 2016
The Human Rights Centre of Ghent University[1] has submitted a third party intervention in the cases of Nikolay Alekseyev and Movement for Marriage Equality v. Russia and Nikolay Alekseyev and Others v. Russia. The case concerns the refusal by the Russian authorities to register two LGBT rights organisations because they were considered extremist organisations on […]
August 12, 2016
By Ronan Ó Fathaigh The European Court’s Fourth Section has held in Ziembiński v. Poland (No. 2) that a newspaper editor’s conviction for describing local government officials as “dim-witted” and a “numbskull” violated the editor’s Article 10 right to freedom of expression. The judgment may prove decisive for future prosecutions of journalists under article 216(2) […]
July 27, 2016
This guest post was written by Dr. Nelleke Koffeman (*) The Taddeucci and McCall v. Italy judgment of 30 June 2016 is a novelty in the ECtHR’s case-law on equal treatment of same-sex couples. It is the first time that the Court, in finding a violation of the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of sexual […]
July 22, 2016
This guest post was written by Marie-Bénédicte Dembour, Professor of Law and Anthropology at Brighton Business School, University of Brighton. (*) It does not seem an exaggeration to say that the recent judgment in Ramadan v. Malta suggests that citizenship revocation is not generally problematic under the European Convention on Human Rights. How else might […]