Strasbourg Observers

View posts from: Freedom of Religion

  • Dr. Betül Durmuş

Cupiał v Poland: What Could This Case Offer on Religious Upbringing?

May 04, 2023

By Betül Durmuş On 9 March 2023, the First Section of the European Court of Human Rights (‘the Court’) delivered its decision on a promising case on religious upbringing – Cupiał v Poland – which concerns the criminal conviction of a religious parent for psychological abuse of his children. Although the case carried a great […]

  • Cathérine Van de Graaf

Banning body-covering swimwear: the Human Rights Centre submitted a Third Party Intervention to the ECtHR in Missaoui and Akhandaf v. Belgium

October 28, 2022

By Cathérine Van de Graaf On the 12th of September, the Human Rights Centre[1] (HRC) of Ghent University (Belgium) submitted a third party intervention (TPI) before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or the Court) in the communicated case of Missaoui and Akhandaf v. Belgium, after being granted leave to intervene by the President […]

  • Tommaso Virgili

Rabczewska v. Poland and blasphemy before the ECtHR: A neverending story of inconsistency

October 21, 2022

by Tommaso Virgili In the case Rabczewska v. Poland, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) held that the conviction of a Polish woman due to her blasphemous statements against the Bible violated her rights under Article 10 of the Convention. This case stands in contrast with the recent E.S. v. Austria, where the Court […]

  • Natalie Alkiviadou

Blasphemy and Choudhury v. the United Kingdom revisited in light of the attack on Rushdie

September 27, 2022

By Natalie Alkiviadou Salman Rushdie Internationally acclaimed, Indian-born writer Salman Rushdie has written a range of novels and stories on social, historical and philosophical issues. He is a controversial figure mostly because of his fourth novel, ‘The Satanic Verses’. The book was published in 1988 and was heavily criticised by some Muslim leaders as blasphemous, […]

  • Simona Florescu

Walking on a tightrope: some reflections on the ECtHR’s role in assessing the best interests of the child in parental disputes over the child’s religious upbringing

September 23, 2022

By Simona Florescu In T.C. v Italy, the ECtHR was once again called upon to decide on sensitive questions involving divergent parental views over the child’s upbringing. In this particular case, the main question was whether the Italian courts’ judgments ordering the applicant to refrain from actively involving his daughter in religious activities constituted discrimination […]

  • Cathérine Van de Graaf

Belgium reprimanded in Anderlecht Christian Assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Others: the procedure for recognition of a religion lacks minimum guarantees of fairness

June 14, 2022

By Cathérine Van de Graaf Anderlecht Christian Assembly of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Others v. Belgium is one of these judgments where you are reading the reasoning of the European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter: Court or ECtHR) and you think you know the direction it is going, but it then takes a turn that nobody […]

  • Naoual El Yattouti

Polat v. Austria: A Tale of Two Missed Opportunities

December 14, 2021

By Naoual El Yattouti In the case Polat v. Austria, the mother of a deceased child complained that the carrying out of a post-mortem despite her and her husband’s objections based on religious reasons, violated her rights under Articles 8, 9 and 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights (hereafter: the Convention). The European […]

  • Cathérine Van de Graaf

The Human Rights Centre submitted a joint third party intervention in a case before the ECtHR against Belgium concerning a ban of religious symbols in public high schools

September 01, 2021

Cathérine Van de Graaf is a research fellow at the Academy for European Human Rights Protection (University of Cologne) and affiliated researcher at the Human Rights Centre (Ghent University). The Human Rights Centre of Ghent University (Belgium) submitted a joint third party intervention (TPI) before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or the Court) […]

  • Guest Blogger

The Case of Perovy v. Russia: Dealing with the Right to Freedom of Religion in the Educational Sphere through Picking the Right Fruits

December 10, 2020

By Inez van Soolingen (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) In the case of Perovy v. Russia, Ms. Perova and Mr. Perov complained that a rite of blessing in their son’s classroom, carried out by a priest of a different belief than their own, violated their rights under Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 (hereafter: the Protocol) and […]

  • Guest Blogger

Grimmark v. Sweden and Steen v. Sweden: no right for healthcare professionals to refuse to participate in abortion services, and framing strategies by anti-abortion actors.

April 06, 2020

This blogpost was written by Niklas Barke, PhD Candidate, Institute for Human Rights, Åbo Akademi University On the 11th of March, the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) issued its decisions in Grimmark v. Sweden and Steen v. Sweden, two cases casting light on the issue of refusal by healthcare professionals to participate in […]

  • Guest Blogger

Stuck in the middle with Papageorgiou: Missed or new opportunities?

November 27, 2019

Effie Fokas is a political scientist and a Senior Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, Research Associate of the London School of Economics Hellenic Observatory, and member of the Henry Luce/Leadership 100 project on Orthodoxy and Human Rights (Orthodox Christian Studies Center, Fordham University). She was also Principal Investigator of […]

  • Guest Blogger

Lachiri v. Belgium: Headscarf ban imposed on a civil party in a courtroom in violation of religious freedom

November 23, 2018

By Julie Ringelheim, researcher with the FRS-FNRS and Professor at Louvain University. In Lachiri v. Belgium, decided on 18 September 2018, the European Court of Human Rights held that excluding a woman from the courtroom, who was a civil party to the case, on the ground that she wore an ‘Islamic headscarf’ (hijab) amounted to […]

  • Eva Brems

Skullcap in the Courtroom: A rare case of mandatory accommodation of Islamic religious practice

December 11, 2017

In Hamidović v Bosnia and Herzegovina (5 December 2017), the Fourth Section of the Court found a violation of articles 9 and 14 ECHR on account of the punishment of a witness for wearing an Islamic skullcap in the courtroom. As almost all claims for accommodation of Islamic religious practice have failed before the Court, […]

  • Guest Blogger

Belkacemi and Oussar v Belgium and Dakir v Belgium: the Court again addresses the full-face veil, but it does not move away from its restrictive approach

July 25, 2017

By Marcella Ferri, ​Adjunct Professor of International Human Rights Law – ASERI, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan (Italy), and Adjunct Professor of Institutions of Comparative and European Law – module of European Law – University of Bergamo, Bergamo (Italy) On 11 July 2017, the European Court of Human Rights delivered two similar judgments in the Belkacemi and Oussar […]

  • Guest Blogger

Osmanoğlu and Kocabaş v. Switzerland: A Swiss perspective

March 30, 2017

By Fabienne Bretscher, PhD Student at the University of Zurich, Visiting Researcher at the Erasmus School of Law Rotterdam In a recent judgment, the ECtHR found that the refusal to grant Muslim students exemption from mandatory swimming classes in Swiss public schools did not amount to a violation of the right to freedom of religion […]

  • Saïla Ouald Chaib

European Court of Justice keeps the door to religious discrimination in the private workplace opened. The European Court of Human Rights could close it.

March 27, 2017

By Saïla Ouald-Chaib and Valeska David On 14 March 2017, the European Court of Justice issued two judgments, in the cases of Achbita and Bougnaoui concerning the manifestation of beliefs in the private workplace. From the perspective of inclusion and human rights law, the judgments are very disappointing. They basically legitimize and even provide a […]

  • Saïla Ouald Chaib

ECJ headscarf series (6): The vicious circle of prejudices against Muslim women

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 […]

  • Eva Brems

ECJ headscarf series (5): The Field in which Achbita will Land – A Brief Sketch of Headscarf Persecution in Belgium

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 […]

  • Guest Blogger

ECJ headscarf series (4): The dark side of neutrality

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 […]

  • Guest Blogger

ECJ headscarf series (3): The Everyday Troubles of Pluralism

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 […]

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