August 19, 2022
By Lorenzo Bernardini Introduction How high is the burden of proof on the foreigner who claims to have suffered degrading treatments? In which cases may the authorities adopt coercive methods against a foreigner already detained? The European Court of Human Rights (‘the Court’, ‘the ECtHR’ or ‘the Strasbourg Court’) was called upon to answer these […]
May 23, 2022
By Mathilde Brackx and Laura Cools The Human Rights Centre of Ghent University (Belgium) and the Centre for the Social Study of Migration and Refugees (CESSMIR) recently submitted a third-party intervention (TPI) before the European Court of Human Rights in the communicated case of Fatoumata Diaraye BARRY v. Belgium. The case concerns a decision of […]
December 23, 2020
By Lewis Graham (PhD Researcher at Pembroke College, Cambridge) The Fourth Section recently delivered its judgment in Unuane v United Kingdom, in which it found that the UK had breached Article 8 ECHR through approving the deportation of an individual without properly evaluating the impact this would have on his private and family life under […]
October 29, 2020
By Bahija Aarrass (Assistant professor of administrative and migration law at the Open University Netherlands) In the judgment in the case of Muhammad and Muhammad v. Romania, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights held that there had been a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 7 of the ECHR, which […]
September 18, 2020
By Mark Klaassen (assistant professor of immigration law at the Europa Institute of Leiden University) To what extent can irregular migrants rely on the protection of Article 8 ECHR to regularize their irregular residence? The European Court of Human Rights (the Court) has dealt with this issue before, in different cases with various factual backgrounds. […]
May 06, 2020
By Francesco Luigi Gatta, Research Fellow, UCLouvain, member of EDEM (Equipe droits européens et migrations) On 24 March 2020, the ECtHR delivered its judgment in Asady and Others v. Slovakia, which concerned the expulsion to Ukraine of a group of Afghan nationals. With a controversial ruling (passed by a slight majority of 4 votes to […]
April 23, 2020
By Marie-Bénédicte Dembour Have the Strasbourg Observers really been running only for ten years? On receiving the invitation to celebrate this anniversary, my mind travelled back to the time before your emergence, and I felt rather isolated in my critical approach to the study of the European Court of Human Rights. Long before I joined […]
December 23, 2019
By Dr. Vladislava Stoyanova (Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Lund University) The ECtHR has been for a long time criticized for its approach to immigration detention that diverts from the generally applicable principles to deprivation of liberty in other contexts. As Cathryn Costello has observed in her article Immigration Detention: The Ground beneath our Feet, […]
October 17, 2019
By Dr. Mark Klaassen, Institute of Immigration Law, Leiden University On 1 October 2019, in the Savran judgment the European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter: ‘the Court’) has applied the Paposhvili-test in cases involving the expulsion of migrants who fear to be the victim of a violation of Article 3 ECHR because a medical treatment […]
March 29, 2019
By Elina Todorov, PhD Candidate, Tampere University (Finland) On 28. February 2019 the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered a judgement concerning unaccompanied minors in an irregular situation, namely H.A. and others v. Greece. In H.A. the Court found several violations of the Convention, in particular a partial violation of Article 3 regarding the […]
March 30, 2018
By Dr. Mark Klaassen, Assistant professor at the Institute of Immigration Law (Leiden University) Introduction On 1 March 2018, the Fifth Section of the Court unanimously held in T.C.E. v. Germany that the revocation of the right of residence in Germany of a Nigerian national after being criminally convicted for a drugs related offence did […]
November 27, 2017
By Benoit Dhondt, Belgian lawyer specialized in migration and refugee law. As a teaching assistant, he is also connected to the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University, more specifically its Human Rights and Migration Law Clinic. Recently the ECtHR took an umpteenth swing at the question to what extent the family life and private life […]
June 26, 2017
By Ellen Desmet, assistant professor of migration law at Ghent University On 30 May 2017, the European Court of Human Rights decided two cases regarding the expulsion of rejected asylum seekers by Switzerland to Sudan. In A.I. v. Switzerland, the Court held unanimously that there would be a violation of Articles 2 and 3 ECHR […]
January 10, 2017
Guest post by Denise Venturi, PhD Student in International Law, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Italy) and KU Leuven (Belgium) On 15 December 2016 the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) gave its much awaited ruling in the case Khlaifia and Others v Italy. The judgement follows a 2015 decision of the Second […]
December 15, 2016
In what is possibly one of the most important judgments of 2016, Paposhvili v. Belgium, the Grand Chamber has memorably reshaped its Article 3 case law on the expulsion of seriously ill migrants. In a unanimous judgment, the Court leaves behind the restrictive application of the high Article 3 threshold set in N. v. the […]
November 21, 2016
By Ellen Desmet, assistant professor of migration law at Ghent University. On 13 October 2016, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously found in B.A.C. v. Greece that the Greek state’s omission to decide on an asylum application during more than twelve years violated Article 8 as well as Article 13 in conjunction with Article […]
October 31, 2016
Guest post by Benoit Dhondt, Belgian lawyer specialized in migration and refugee law. As a teaching assistant, he is also connected to the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University, more specifically its Human Rights and Migration Law Clinic. Several practitioners were disappointed with the road the ECtHR traveled in Khan v. Germany last year. With […]
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 […]
June 13, 2016
This guest post was written by Alix Schlüter, Ph.D. researcher at Bucerius Law School, Hamburg. On May 24th 2016 the Grand Chamber found that the refusal to grant family reunion to a Ghanaian couple in Denmark violated Article 14 ECHR in conjunction with Article 8 ECHR. Overruling the Chamber’s judgment of 2014, the Court held […]
April 06, 2016
By Eva Brems In a recent case, the Court found a violation of article 3 ECHR on account of the defective investigation into a serious incident of racist violence that occurred in Athens in 2009. In addition, the detention conditions imposed upon the victim (sic!) also violated article 3. The judgment explicitly recognizes the structural […]