March 21, 2023
By Titouan Berhaut-Streel & Charly Derave On 8 September 2022, the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgement in Drelon v. France. The case concerns Mr Drelon’s denied applications to donate blood because he refused to answer whether he had ever had sex with other men and therefore to disclose his alleged sexual orientation. […]
February 10, 2023
By Marie-Hélène Peter-Spiess[1] In its recent judgment A.L. v. France, the European Court of Human Rights (the “ECtHR” or the “Court”) looked into the issue of domestic surrogacy and legal fatherhood in a situation where two paternal figures are on the line. More specifically, the case featured a surrogacy-born child that the surrogate entrusted to […]
December 23, 2022
by Nikos Koumoutzis Since 2014, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has been hearing cross-border surrogacy cases concerning the right to recognition of parentage of the child with its intended parents within the framework of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). A fairly large number of such cases have been reported already, and […]
March 14, 2022
By Sarah Ganty One might expect that with the emphasis placed on the best interests of the child in recent years (even decades), the issue of surrogacy would not be so haphazardly approached by the ECtHR. And yet the patchwork quilt of protection afforded to children (and their parents) born from surrogacy is strikingly insufficient, […]
November 30, 2021
By Dr Kyriaki Patsianta In the case of X v. Poland, the ECtHR found that there had been a violation of articles 14 and 8 of the Convention in respect of a homosexual mother, who alleged that the removal of her youngest child from her custody, after her former husband obtained a change in the […]
April 07, 2021
By Charly Derave, PhD Researcher at the Perelman Centre for legal philosophy (ULB), and Hania Ouhnaoui, coordinator of the Equality Law Clinic (ULB). On 24 February 2021, the Equality Law Clinic (ELC) of the Université Libre de Bruxelles[1] and the Human Rights Centre (HRC) of Ghent University[2] submitted a third-party intervention to the European Court […]
January 15, 2021
Blog post by Riccardo Viviani, LL.M., and Denise Venturi, Ph.D. Candidate in Law, KU Leuven, Research Unit Public Law* On 17 November 2020, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered its judgment in B. and C. v Switzerland. The case concerned the risk of deportation and ill-treatment upon return to the Gambia of a […]
January 12, 2021
By Alice Margaria (Senior Research Fellow, Department of ‘Law & Anthropology’, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology) In 2020, an application concerning the parental rights of a co-mother was to be expected. What is surprising, however, is the ECtHR’s response. In Honner v France, the Court held that the refusal to grant contact rights to […]
November 20, 2020
By Claire Poppelwell-Scevak (PhD Researcher at the Human Rights Centre, Ghent University) and Sarah Den Haese (PhD Researcher at the Human Rights Centre, Ghent University) The Human Rights Centre of Ghent University[1] (Belgium) recently submitted a third party intervention (TPI) before the European Court of Human Rights in the communicated case of Szypuła v. Poland and […]
February 07, 2020
Ingrida Milkaite is a PhD researcher in the research group Law & Technology at Ghent University, Belgium. She is working on the research project ‘A children’s rights perspective on privacy and data protection in the digital age’ (Ghent University, Special Research Fund) and is a member of the Human Rights Centre at the Faculty of Law and […]
August 29, 2019
On 16 July, the Court delivered its judgment in the case of Zhdanov 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 account of the allegedly immoral character of their activities. In this judgment, the Court found a […]
April 02, 2019
This post was written by Mariam Gaiparashvili and Sarah Schoentjes, Master students at the Human Rights Legal Clinic, Ghent University In X v. FYROM, the ECtHR confirmed the Member States’ positive obligation under Article 8 ECHR to establish a clear legal procedure for gender recognition. Disappointingly, however, it refused to examine the applicant’s claim that […]
October 19, 2018
By Pieter Cannoot, PhD Researcher at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University On 11 October 2018, the European Court of Human Rights found a violation of Article 8 ECHR in a case involving a transsexual woman called S.V. The application concerned the Italian authorities’ refusal to authorise S.V. officially changing her first name on […]
August 03, 2018
The Human Rights Centre of Ghent University[1] has recently submitted a third party intervention in the case of Minasyan and Others v. Armenia, which raises important issues concerning the protection of LGBTIQ+ persons against hate speech. In our third party intervention, we invite the Court to clarify Convention standards regarding the positive obligation for the […]
July 24, 2018
By Manon Beury, research assistant in Comparative Sexual Orientation Law, Leiden University Following the eagerly-awaited judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Coman and Others v. Romania, the Romanian Constitutional Court decided on 18 July 2018 that same-sex married couples have the right to reside in the country if one […]
April 11, 2018
By Pieter Cannoot, PhD researcher at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University On 6 February 2018, the European Court of Human Rights declared the application of Francine Bonnaud and Patricia Lecoq, two French women who were in a relationship at the time of the relevant facts, manifestly ill-founded. The application concerned the refusal by […]
February 23, 2018
By Sam MacMahon Baldwin, Attorney-at-law (Advokat) at Gorrissen Federspiel 2017 ended with the Strasbourg Court reaffirming the decision from Orlandi and Others v. Italy that Member States must recognize and protect same-sex unions – although the Court did not require recognition of actual same-sex marriage. Now well into the new year, it is the EU […]
February 02, 2018
By Claire Poppelwell-Scevak, PhD FWO Fellow, Gent University From first glance, the decision of Orlandi and Others v Italy on 14 December 2017, may appear as a step in the direction of same-sex couples being afforded the protection of Article 12 ECHR – the right to marry. However, when one digs a little deeper into […]
December 05, 2017
By Claire Poppelwell-Scevak, FWO Research Fellow, Human Rights Centre (Ghent University) On 26 October 2017 the European Court of Human Rights held in Ratzenböck and Seydl v Austria that Austria’s registered partnership law, which is only open to homosexual couples, did not violate the European Convention on Human Rights by denying this registered partnership to […]
July 13, 2017
Earlier this week, we published a blog post by Pieter Cannoot and Claire Poppelwell-Scevak on the judgment of Bayev and Others v. Russia in which the Court held that Russia’s so-called gay propaganda law violated the European Convention. In this blog post, I will not further dwell upon the outcome of the case or the […]