Strasbourg Observers

View posts from: Article 4 Protocol 4

  • Grażyna Baranowska, Marie-Bénédicte Dembour and Isabel Kienzle.

Evidencing Pushbacks at borders of CoE Member States: Third Party Intervention in A.A.N. and Others v. Greece (38203/20)

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 […]

  • Grażyna Baranowska

What – if any – are the consequences of the ‘instrumentalization of migration’ for human rights protection under the ECHR? A look at the arguments raised at the ECtHR Grand Chamber hearing on pushbacks to Belarus.

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 […]

  • Isabel Kienzle and Jonathan Kießling

Evidently unlawful, yet difficult to evidence: M.A. and Z.R. v. Cyprus advances Strasbourg’s case law on pushbacks

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 […]

  • Joyce de Coninck

MH and Others v. Croatia: Resolving the Jurisdictional and Evidentiary Black Hole for Expulsion Cases?

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 […]