July 07, 2016
Last year, the Court issued the judgment of Oliari and Others v. Italy, described on this blog as “a stepping stone towards full legal recognition of same-sex relationships in Europe.” In this judgment the Court recognized that Article 8 ECHR encompasses a positive obligation on States to put in place a legal framework providing for […]
June 29, 2016
By Dirk Voorhoof and Daniel Simons Investigative journalism sometimes operates at the limits of the law. This is especially true of what could be called ‘check it out’ journalism: reporting in which a journalist tests how effective a law or procedure is by attempting to circumvent it. A recent decision shows that those who commit […]
June 16, 2016
By Stijn Smet In Fürst-Pfeifer v Austria, the majority of the Fourth Section of the ECtHR ruled that the applicant’s right to private life was outweighed by the freedom of expression of an online publication and offline newspaper. In one of the fiercest and most poignant dissenting opinions I have read to date, judges Wojtyczek […]
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 […]
June 09, 2016
By Helena De Vylder In the inadmissibility decision delivered on 26 April 2016 in the case of N. v. Russia and M. v. Russia, the Court rejects the petition for lack of standing of the applicants’ representative. The victims were unable to formally appoint their representative by signing a ‘power of attorney-document’, since they disappeared, […]
May 20, 2016
By Yaiza Janssens Not many ECtHR cases that focus on a possible obligation under Article 8 of the Convention to conduct a criminal investigation and even fewer cases where the facts fall exclusively concern minors. In A, B and C v. Latvia, a Chamber judgment issued on 31 March 2016, the applicants complained that the […]
May 17, 2016
This guest post was written by Constantin Cojocariu, human rights lawyer specialised in disability and transgender rights, who acted as the applicants’ representative in both cases reviewed in this article. The Court’s disability jurisprudence generally concerns the management of compulsion in institutional settings, including with respect to detention/institutionalisation, forced medical treatment or restraint or incapacitation. […]
May 12, 2016
By Corina Heri, PhD candidate at the University of Zürich / Visiting Scholar at Ghent University In Kocherov and Sergeyeva v. Russia, a Chamber judgment issued on 29 March 2016, the ECtHR held that the restriction of a mentally disabled father’s parental authority had violated his rights under Article 8 ECHR (the right to respect […]
May 09, 2016
by Daniel Simons and Dirk Voorhoof One-person protests are the only kind of demonstration Russian citizens are permitted to hold without giving prior notice to the authorities. The unanimous judgment in Novikova and others v. Russia stops short of questioning this low threshold, but finds Russia in violation of Article 10 over its excessive zeal […]
May 02, 2016
This guest post was written by Nicole Bürli, PhD, Human Rights Advisor of the World Organisation against Torture. On 26 April 2016, the Grand Chamber of the Court delivered its judgment in the case of Murray v. the Netherlands. Overturning the Chamber judgment, the Grand Chamber rightly found the irreducibility of a life sentence of […]
April 20, 2016
Those who think stereotypical beliefs about rape are a thing of the past will probably be surprised to read the domestic reasoning in cases that have recently reached Strasbourg. Allusions to women’s “immoral” behavior in I.P. v. the Republic of Moldova and insinuations that women should have resisted “by scratching or biting” in Y. v. […]
April 14, 2016
This guest post was written by Fleur van Leeuwen (*) Around a month ago, the Court ruled in Civek v. Turkey that it was not necessary to examine the applicant’s complaint of discrimination in a domestic violence case that ended in death. This was disheartening, especially because in recent domestic violence judgments the Court has […]
April 11, 2016
By Dirk Voorhoof It is common knowledge among “Strasbourg observers” that the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights does not have the best reputation of late in relation to the freedom of expression. In Palomo Sánchez v. Spain, Animal Defenders International v. United Kingdom, Mouvement Raeliën Suisse v. Switzerland, Delfi AS v. […]
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 […]
April 04, 2016
By Salvo Nicolosi In the Grand Chamber’s ruling of last 23 March 2016, the Strasbourg judges came back on appeal to the controversial case of F.G. v. Sweden, which on 16 January 2014 had divided the Chamber’s judges as to the assessment of the risk of persecution for an Iranian national who had applied for […]
April 01, 2016
This guest post was written by Joseph Damamme, PhD student at the Centre of European Law of the Université libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) and member of the Equality Law Clinic. The Strasbourg Court recently delivered a significant judgment on the inclusion of students with disabilities in the field of (non-compulsory) education. Çam v. Turkey (ruling […]
March 17, 2016
By Valeska David The recently delivered ECtHR judgment in Soares de Melo v. Portugal (application No.72850/14) conveys a strong message on childrearing responsibilities and child protection: families living in poverty (mostly led by women) cannot be punished for their deprivation and their children should not be ‘rescued’ from them. Instead, and because children are not […]
March 10, 2016
In the recent case of Garib v. the Netherlands, the Court considered that a policy imposing minimum income conditions on persons wishing to settle in a number of inner-city areas of the city of Rotterdam did not violate the freedom to choose one’s residence as guaranteed by Article 2 Protocol No. 4. In doing so, […]
March 03, 2016
By Fleur van Leeuwen, LL.M. Ph.D., human rights researcher and lecturer. On 14 January 2011 Selma Civek was murdered by her husband. It was the denouement of years of battering and abuse. Last week the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) ruled that Turkey had violated Civek’s right to life. It deemed it unnecessary […]
February 25, 2016
This guest post was written by Zsolt Bobis, Program Coordinator with the Open Society Justice Initiative’s Equality and Inclusion Cluster @ZsoltBobis The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled in Pajić v. Croatia that Croatia’s former legal regime that had categorically denied same-sex couples the possibility of obtaining family reunification had violated human rights […]