Strasbourg Observers

View posts from: Prohibition of Discrimination

  • Dr. Cathérine Van de Graaf & Yannick Schoog

Too Old to Deserve State Support? – Šaltinytė v. Lithuania: Age Discrimination in Socio-Economic Policy

December 22, 2021

By Dr. Cathérine Van de Graaf and Yannick Schoog Introduction On the 26th of October 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR; the Court) answered the question of whether or not a fixed age limit to qualify for a housing subsidy for ‘young families’ was discriminatory in the negative. The case of Šaltinytė v. […]

  • Kyriaki Patsianta

X v. Poland: A victory, yet not a triumph for homosexual parents in Strasbourg

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 […]

  • Dr. Pieter Cannoot and Dr. Ingrida Milkaite

A.M. and Others v. Russia: ECtHR stands up for trans parents

November 09, 2021

By dr. Pieter Cannoot and dr. Ingrida Milkaite On 6 July 2021 the European Court of Human Rights rendered its highly anticipated judgment in the case of A.M. and Others v. Russia, in which the Human Rights Centre submitted a third party intervention (earlier blogpost summarising our main arguments can be accessed here). The Court […]

  • Alicia Hendricks

Gruba and Others v. Russia: the ECtHR repeats its Konstantin Markin v. Russia jurisprudence but (again) misses a child-oriented perspective

October 01, 2021

By Alicia Hendricks The case of Gruba and Others v. Russia concerns the difference in entitlement to parental leave between policemen and policewomen. The European Court of Human Rights (the Court) ruled in favour of the male defendants by stating that this difference in treatment amounted to sex discrimination contrary to Article 14 (prohibition of […]

  • Merel Vrancken

Disenfranchisement of woman with a disability (yet again) reveals ECtHR’s struggle with CRPD in Caamaño Valle v. Spain

June 23, 2021

By Merel Vrancken, PhD student and assistant in constitutional law at UHasselt. In the case of Caamaño Valle v. Spain, the ECtHR held that the disenfranchisement of a woman with a mental disability did not amount to a violation of her right to vote under art. 3 of Protocol No. 1, nor did it amount […]

  • Guest Blogger

Medical “normalisation” of intersex persons: third-party intervention to the ECtHR in the case of M. v. France

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 […]

  • Guest Blogger

Jurčić v. Croatia: clarity on protecting women undergoing IVF treatment from discrimination

March 24, 2021

By Jonas Deweer-Vanmeerhaeghe, lawyer at the Belgian federal Institute for the Equality of Women and Men, where he specializes in insurance discrimination and the protection of the rights of transgender and intersex persons. Jonas is a founding member of GenderSpectrum, a non-profit advocating on behalf of gender diverse persons, and he also volunteers for UTSOPI, […]

  • Guest Blogger

Addressing gender discrimination at work, still an important challenge for the ECtHR in Napotnik v. Romania

December 21, 2020

Beril Önder: PhD Candidate, University of Strasbourg (Institut de Recherches Carré de Malberg) and Ghent University (Human Rights Centre) On 20 October 2020, the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’ or the ‘Court’) delivered a judgment in the case of Napotnik v. Romania (application no. 33139/13). The case concerns the immediate termination of a female […]

  • Guest Blogger

Legal sex/gender recognition beyond the binary: Human Rights Centre submits Third Party Intervention

December 16, 2020

By Mattias Decoster (PhD researcher at Ghent University and University of Antwerp) and Sarah Schoentjes (PhD researcher at Ghent University). The Human Rights Centre of Ghent University[1], in collaboration with the Equality Law Clinic from the Université Libre de Bruxelles[2], submitted a third party intervention before the European Court of Human Rights in the case […]

  • Guest Blogger

The Challenges of Saying ‘I do’ for same-sex couples: The Human Rights Centre submits a Third Party Intervention in transnational same-sex marriage case

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 […]

  • Guest Blogger

Molla Sali v. Greece: a pyrrhic victory following just satisfaction judgment? 

July 15, 2020

By Adiba Firmansyah, LLB graduate from Middlesex University Dubai, soon to start as an LLM student at King’s College London In its principal judgment in Molla Sali v. Greece, delivered on 19 December 2018, the Court held that there had been a violation of Article 14 ECHR in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. […]

  • Guest Blogger

Human Rights Centre submits a third party intervention in case concerning the right to family life of transgender parents and their children

July 08, 2020

Judith Vermeulen is a doctoral researcher and a member of the Law & Technology research group, the Human Rights Centre and PIXELS at Ghent University. The Human Rights Centre of Ghent University (Belgium)[1] submitted a third party intervention (TPI) before the European Court of Human Rights in the communicated case of A.M. and Others v. […]

  • Guest Blogger

The Court’s first ruling on Roma’s access to safe water and sanitation in Hudorovic et al. v. Slovenia: reasons for hope and worry

April 09, 2020

This blogpost is written by Valeska David who is an Affiliated Researcher at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University and Assistant Professor of International Law at University of Navarra. She has recently published the book ‘Cultural Difference and Economic Disadvantage in Regional Human Rights Courts: An Integrated View’ (Intersentia, 2020). On 10 March 2020, […]

  • Guest Blogger

A picture of a same-sex kiss on Facebook wreaks havoc: Beizaras and Levickas v. Lithuania

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 […]

  • Guest Blogger

Gender-based violence triggers differential treatment in housing benefit case

December 02, 2019

By Katarina Frostell, Project Manager and PhD Candidate, Institute for Human Rights, Åbo Akademi University, Finland On 24 October 2019, the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgment in J.D. and A. v. the United Kingdom, in the so-called bedroom tax case. In its judgment, the Court applied a discrimination analysis on the reduction […]

  • Guest Blogger

Yeshtla v. the Netherlands: a missed opportunity to reflect on the discriminatory effects of States’ social policy choices

March 08, 2019

By Fulvia Staiano, Adjunct Professor of International Law and European Union Law (Giustino Fortunato University) On 15 January 2019, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered an inadmissibility decision on the case of Emabet Yeshtla v. the Netherlands. In this case, the ECtHR was asked to determine whether the withdrawal of the applicant’s housing […]

  • Guest Blogger

Judgment of Burlya and Others v. Ukraine: Local authorities held accountable for violating Convention rights of Roma residents in pogrom

December 19, 2018

By Tess Heirwegh, PhD researcher at the Human Rights Centre, Ghent University This blog post will focus on the recent case of Burlya and Others v. Ukraine to highlight the negative role that local authorities may play in human rights realisation and why it is essential that the Court held them explicitly accountable for it. […]

  • Guest Blogger

Of firearms and weak women: sex discrimination in Hülya Ebru Demirel v. Turkey

July 31, 2018

Dr. Alexandra Timmer was one of the co-founders of this blog in 2010. She is assistant professor human rights law at Utrecht University, and acting specialist coordinator gender equality of the European network of legal experts in gender equality and non-discrimination. Hülya Ebru Demirel v. Turkey is a case concerning sex discrimination in employment. A […]

  • 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, […]

  • Claire Poppelwell-Scevak

Same Same But Different: A heterosexual couple denied registered partnership by the ECtHR

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 […]

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