Strasbourg Observers

View posts from: Prohibition of Discrimination

  • Alexandra Timmer

Horváth and Kiss v. Hungary: a strong new Roma school segregation case

February 06, 2013

The Strasbourg Court has once more delivered a judgment in a Roma school segregation case. The applicants in Horváth and Kiss v. Hungary are two young Roma men, who were diagnosed as having mild mental disabilities when they were children. As a result of these diagnoses, they were placed in a remedial school. Their education […]

  • Weichie

X. v. Turkey: Why a Ruling on the Basis of Discriminatory Effects Would Have Been Preferable

October 25, 2012

A few weeks ago, the European Court of Human Rights released its judgment in X. v. Turkey. The case concerned a homosexual detainee who was put in an individual cell and under a very restrictive detention regime, after he complained about intimidation and harassment by heterosexual detainees with whom he shared a collective cell. On […]

  • Alexandra Timmer

The Court on Racial Discrimination (Part I): M. and Others v. Italy and Bulgaria

October 09, 2012

It’s fair to say that the Court’s record on racial discrimination is hesitant. Only as late as 2004 did the Court for the first time find that a State was guilty of racial discrimination.[1] This was in the Chamber judgment of Nachova v Bulgaria, which was later partly rescinded by the Grand Chamber in 2005. […]

  • Alexandra Timmer

Gender equality and religious freedom in politics; Dutch SGP case declared inadmissible

July 23, 2012

The ECtHR has brought a turbulent Dutch legal saga to a close. In the highly interesting Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij v. the Netherlands, the Court has declared the complaint by the Dutch political party ‘SGP’ inadmissible. The SGP is, in the words of the Court, “a confessional political party firmly rooted in historical Dutch Reformed Protestantism” […]

  • Lourdes Peroni

Violence Against Roma: Unmasking Racist Motives

July 03, 2012

One case I want to flag among the recent judgments of the Court is Koky and Others v. Slovakia. The case concerns an attack with possible racial overtones at a Roma settlement. In this post, I highlight a couple of interesting aspects of the Court’s reasoning under Article 3 but puzzle over the exclusion of […]

  • Guest Blogger

The Adventures of Tintin in the land of the law

May 02, 2012

This guest post was written by Jogchum Vrielink, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leuven, Belgium.[1] In Belgium, a Congolese student and a minority organisation sought to obtain a ban on the comic book ‘Tintin in the Congo’. A Brussels court rejected their claims. Despite this outcome, the reasoning of the court jeopardises free speech. […]

  • Alexandra Timmer

Testimonial privilege for life-partners? The formalism of van der Heijden v Netherlands

April 11, 2012

When it comes to protecting family life, the Strasbourg Court is torn between realism and formalism. The recent Grand Chamber case of van der Heijden v Netherlands is a good example of this. The Court showed itself to be deeply divided over a question of testimonial privilege – meaning the right not to testify against […]

  • Saïla Ouald Chaib

Francesco Sessa v. Italy: A Dilemma Majority Religion Members Will Probably Not Face

April 05, 2012

This post was co-authored by Saïla Ouald Chaib and Lourdes Peroni This week, in a 4-3 judgment, the Court ruled against a violation of the freedom of religion of Mr. Sessa, a lawyer and member of the Jewish faith, unable to attend a court hearing scheduled on Yom Kippur. The case is Francesco Sessa v. […]

  • Alexandra Timmer

Gender Justice in Strasbourg

March 22, 2012

Today, in the judgment of Konstantin Markin v. Russia, the Grand Chamber has re-defined its jurisprudence on sex discrimination. Regular readers of this blog will know that the “Strasbourg Observers” have taken a close interest in this case (see earlier posts here and here).  The Human Rights Centre of Ghent University – of which we […]

  • Alexandra Timmer

Stereotypes of Roma: Aksu v. Turkey in the Grand Chamber

March 20, 2012

 The Grand Chamber has handed down its much-awaited judgment in Aksu v. Turkey. This case concerns the use of derogatory stereotypical images of Roma in government-sponsored publications. The Grand Chamber holds with 16 votes to 1 that article 8 (right to private life) has not been violated. I have mixed feelings about the Court’s reasoning. […]

  • Laurens Lavrysen

French Roma policy violates European Social Charter

December 06, 2011

In a decision of 28 June (COHRE v. France, no. 63/2010), which was only recently made public, the European Committee of Social Rights has found the French zero tolerance policy towards East European Roma living in illegal camps to be in violation of the European Social Charter. The case, which was lodged by the NGO […]

  • Maris Burbergs

Ambit and Scope of Article 8 in Citizenship Cases

October 23, 2011

In a recent judgment in the case of Genovese v. Malta the Court gave very few words when determining the scope and ambit of Article 8. The Court managed to exclude a right, find no violation and determine the scope in the same sentence, and, in contrary to previous citizenship cases, did not give one word […]

  • Alexandra Timmer

Bah v UK: on immigration, discrimination and worrisome reasoning

October 12, 2011

This post was co-authored by Lourdes Peroni and Alexandra Timmer The Court recently ruled on the case of Ms. Bah, a Sierra Leonean woman with indefinite leave to remain in the UK, who asserted that she was discriminated against in the allocation of social housing. The Court’s reasoning in Bah v. UK gives ample food […]

  • Guest Blogger

Stummer v. Austria: gradually moving towards a right to an old-age pension for working prisoners?

October 03, 2011

By Ingrid Leijten. Ingrid Leijten works as a Ph.D. fellow and teaching assistant at the Leiden University Faculty of Law, Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law. Her research interest lies in the development of the ECHR and the practice of the ECtHR in relation to the Member States’ policymaking. Stummer v. Austria deals with the […]

  • Weichie

Blood Donations and the Permanent Exclusion of “Men Who Have Sex with Men”

September 20, 2011

In Belgium, as in many other European countries, homosexual men are not allowed to donate blood. To be more precise, not homosexual men are permanently excluded from donating blood, but “men who have sex with men”. “What’s in a name?”, you might ask. That is what I intend to find out in this post. Reasonable […]

  • Alexandra Timmer

Inter-American Commission praises ECtHR in a landmark decision on domestic violence

September 08, 2011

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights released its keenly anticipated merits report in the case of Jessica Lenahan (Gonzales) v United States a few weeks ago.  This was the first time a domestic violence survivor filed an international legal claim against the U.S.[1] The case has been extensively commented on elsewhere (see for example this […]

  • Saïla Ouald Chaib

Immigration, education and integration. A cloudy combination. (Anatoliy Ponomaryov and Vitaliy Ponomaryov v. Bulgaria)

July 07, 2011

Immigration was a challenge in the past, is still a challenge now and will probably remain a challenge in the future for policy makers as well as for judges. Especially when it comes to public services for individuals staying irregularly in a country, this issue becomes more difficult. Can the regular or irregular stay of […]

  • Alexandra Timmer

Live from Strasbourg: the hearing of Konstantin Markin v. Russia

June 08, 2011

Together with Lourdes and Stijn, I’ve just attended the Grand Chamber hearing in the case of Konstantin Markin v. Russia. We’ve blogged about this case here and here. Just to refresh your memory: the case concerns a military serviceman, Konstantin Markin, who was divorced from his wife and who had custody of their three young […]

  • Alexandra Timmer

Saying It Is Doing It (comments on the hearing in the case of Aksu v. Turkey)

April 19, 2011

The famous American feminist legal theorist Catherine MacKinnon argued that pornography is an act of subordination. In Only Words, she notes: “Social inequality is substantially created and enforced – that is, done – through words and images. . .  Elevation and denigration are all accomplished through meaningful symbols and communicative acts in which saying it […]

  • Alexandra Timmer

Kiyutin v. Russia: landmark case concerning the human rights of people living with HIV

March 21, 2011

Recently, the Court came down with a judgment that strongly condemns the stigmatization of people living with HIV. Kiyutin v. Russia is, as far as I was able to ascertain, the first case in which the Court rules on the merits of a claim of discrimination on the ground of a person’s HIV-positive status. Straight […]

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