August 08, 2025
Alex Geraki Trimi and Pedro Sanz Díaz *** To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Strasbourg Observers Blog, we organised an in-person symposium with scholars, practitioners, and members of the ECtHR on 8–9 May 2025 in Ghent. Connecting in person with so many regular contributors was a wonderful experience and led to engaging dialogue with […]
April 18, 2025
Grażyna Baranowska Marie-Bénédicte Dembour Isabel Kienzle This post, an output of the DISSECT project, is concomitantly being published on the DISSECT blog Regularly operated at many borders of CoE member states, pushbacks are problematic practices from a human rights perspective. They generally violate the principle of non-refoulement under Article 3 ECHR as well as, most […]
March 04, 2025
By Grazyna Baranowska On 12 February 2025, the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR held three hearings relating to pushback cases conducted by Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. The cases were relinquished to the Grand Chamber and heard in a single – very long – day, since all the alleged violations occurred within the same broader context […]
October 22, 2024
By Isabel Kienzle and Jonathan Kießling For the first time, in M.A. and Z.R. v. Cyprus, the ECtHR has decided on a pushback case against Cyprus, addressing the island state’s practice to intercept and return migrants arriving from Lebanon without an individual assessment of their protection needs. As the parties provided conflicting accounts of the […]
January 14, 2022
By Joyce de Coninck MH and Others v. Croatia concerns the return of a family of 14 Afghan individuals from Croatia to Serbia, which resulted in the death of 6-year-old Madina Hussiny. This case is yet another in a rich line of recent cases relating to the rise of institutionalized pushbacks at the external territorial […]