January 15, 2014
As we announced earlier, Lourdes Peroni and I have written an article together which analyzes the development of the vulnerable group concept in the Strasbourg case law. I am happy to say that this article has now been published as: Lourdes Peroni & Alexandra Timmer, Vulnerable Groups: the Promise of an Emergent Concept in European […]
January 13, 2014
This guest post was written by Natalija Bitiukova* Is it possible that having a discriminatory law allowing civil partnerships only for different-sex couples is better than having no law at all? After the Grand Chamber released its judgment in Vallianatos and Others v. Greece case, Lithuanian human rights advocates have realized that indeed it is. […]
January 08, 2014
This guest post was written by Dirk Voorhoof*. The post is a shortened version of an original contribution by the same author, which first appeared on the ECHR Blog. It is reproduced here, in shortened version, with permission and thanks. In Perinçek v. Switzerland, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on 17 December 2013, […]
December 18, 2013
This guest post was written by Georgios Milios* On October 9 2013, Leonarda Dibrani, a 15-years old Roma girl, was arrested by the French police in front of her teachers and classmates and deported to Kosovo along with her parents and five siblings. Initially, it was argued that the family had left Kosovo some years ago seeking […]
December 12, 2013
Recently, the European Court of Human Rights failed to condemn Belgium for two incidents in which police officers slapped suspects of foreign origin – including a minor – in the face during police questioning in relation to trivial affairs. The Court specifically ruled that a one-time slap in the face did not, under the specific […]
December 10, 2013
On Friday 17 January 2014, the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University organizes a seminar on normative dimensions of Procedural Justice in Courts. In the Human Rights Centre, Prof. dr. Eva Brems and her team conducted research building on the procedural justice research of Prof. dr. Tom Tyler, applying it in a normative way to […]
December 03, 2013
By Dirk Voorhoof* and Rónán Ó Fathaigh**, Ghent University In its judgment of 28 November 2013 in the case of Österreichische Vereinigung zur Erhaltung, Stärkung und Schaffung eines wirtschaftlich gesunden land- und forstwirtschaftlichen Grundbesitzes v. Austria (OVESSG) the European Court of Human Rights has further clarified and expanded the scope of application of Article 10 […]
November 29, 2013
On Wednesday, our research team attended the Grand Chamber hearing at the European Court of Human Rights in the case of S.A.S. v. France, in which we submitted a third party intervention on behalf of the Ghent University Human Rights Centre. The case concerns the French law banning the face veil, a highly debated piece […]
November 25, 2013
This guest post was written by Judit Geller* and Adam Weiss** One month ago, the European Court condemned France under Article 8 for violating the rights of travellers (gens du voyage) by ordering their eviction (see the judgment here). The European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) made written submissions as a third-party intervener four and a […]
November 22, 2013
We would hereby like to inform our readers of a call for information, proposals and views on the longer-term future of the system of the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights, recently launched by the Council of Europe: The Council of Europe’s Committee of experts on the reform of the […]
November 19, 2013
The name Mann Singh will probably ring a bell with those who are familiar with the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. In Mann Singh v. France (ECHR, 13/11/2008/, no 4479/07), the Strasbourg Court was confronted with the question whether the French obligation to appear bareheaded on photographs on identity documents was […]
November 14, 2013
On 12 November, the Grand Chamber issued its judgment in the case of Söderman v. Sweden (formerly known as E.S. v. Sweden), finding that Sweden had failed to comply with its positive obligation to protect the applicant’s right to respect for private life (Article 8 ECHR). According to the Grand Chamber, neither a criminal remedy […]
November 11, 2013
The Human Rights Centre of Ghent University organizes a seminar on the topic of Stereotyping as a Human Rights Issue. The seminar will take place in Ghent on 4 December 2013. The purpose of this seminar is to explore the topic of stereotyping from a wide human rights perspective. We will address questions like: How […]
November 07, 2013
On 8 October 2013, the European Court of Human Rights released its judgment in the case of Ricci v. Italy. The case concerned a broadcast by the satirical television programme Striscia la notizia (on Canale 5), which aired an intercepted episode of another television programme, normally broadcast on the public network RAI. The applicant in Ricci […]
October 25, 2013
This guest post was written by Dirk Voorhoof* The European Court’s judgment of 10 October 2013 in Delfi AS v. Estonia has caused a lot of controversy in the world of online media, news portals, internet-groups and freedom of expression websites. Especially the criticism by Article 19, Index on Censorship and The Guardian (amongst others, […]
October 21, 2013
The Strasbourg Court has recently delivered its first judgment on the topic of HIV-based employment discrimination. I.B. v. Greece (judgment in French!) concerns a man who is HIV-positive and who was fired from his job, because his employer wished to keep the company running smoothly. What happened was that a group of I.B.’s co-workers, finding […]
October 11, 2013
This guest post was written by Yousra Benfquih* In the case of Epistatu v. Romania of 24 September 2013 before the European Court of Human Rights, the applicant, Mr. Cristian Epistatu, a Romanian national and final-year high-school student born in 1990, was sentenced to five and a half years’ imprisonment by a judgment of 12 […]
October 07, 2013
This guest post was written by Ronan Ó Fathaigh* and Dirk Voorhoof** Nine years ago, in its landmark Cumpănă and Mazăre v. Romania judgment, a unanimous Grand Chamber laid down a rare absolute rule that prison sentences for defamation are never justified under Article 10 where the defamatory statements concern a matter of public interest. This […]
August 22, 2013
I am very pleased to announce the publication of my article ‘Conflicts between Absolute Rights: A Reply to Steven Greer’ in the latest issue of Human Rights Law Review. The article can be found here. This is the abstract: Can absolute rights conflict? Is it permissible to torture a person to save others from torture? […]
August 07, 2013
This guest post was written by Judit Geller and Dezideriu Gergely, European Roma Rights Centre. In the case of Vona v Hungary, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) openly stood up against racism and hatred when it ruled that if an association’s activities amounts to widespread racist intimidation of a group then the association […]