October 26, 2015
By Dirk Voorhoof * Recently, the Council of Europe Task Force for Freedom of Expression and Media published a book under the title “Journalism at risk. Threats, challenges and perspectives”. Since a Grand Chamber judgment of the European Court of Human Rights of 20 October 2015, a new threat for journalistic freedom has obviously emerged, […]
October 22, 2015
By Ronan Ó Fathaigh The European Court’s First Section has unanimously held that a protestor’s arrest and conviction for failing to obey a police order violated his Article 11 right to freedom of assembly, despite the demonstration being unlawful. The First Section’s opinion in Mammadov v. Azerbaijan tackled the difficult issue of how police officers […]
October 19, 2015
By Dirk Voorhoof * On 17 December 2013 the European Court of Human Rights had ruled by five votes to two that Switzerland had violated the right to freedom of expression by convicting Doğu Perinçek, chairman of the Turkish Workers’ Party, for publicly denying the existence of the genocide against the Armenian people (see […]
October 08, 2015
Guest post by Natasa Mavronicola, Lecturer in Law at Queen’s University Belfast. The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights recently delivered an important judgment on Article 3 ECHR in the case of Bouyid v Belgium. In Bouyid, the Grand Chamber was called upon to consider whether slaps inflicted on a juvenile and […]
October 01, 2015
By Stijn Smet This Monday, 28 September 2015, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights overruled the Chamber judgment in Bouyid v. Belgium (see our post on the Chamber ruling here). The Grand Chamber found a violation of art. 3 ECHR on the substantive aspect of the case, ruling by a clear […]
September 24, 2015
Few judgments have sparked more criticism than N. v. the United Kingdom. The high Article 3 threshold set in the case of a seriously ill woman expelled to Uganda where she died shortly after her return has been criticized both inside and outside the Court. Following what some considered a missed opportunity in S.J. v. […]
September 16, 2015
This guest post was written by Giuseppe Zago, Researcher of Comparative Sexual Orientation Law, Leiden University (*) Last 21 July, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Oliari and others v. Italy had once again the opportunity to analyze the status of same-sex couples wishing to marry or enter into a legally recognized partnership. […]
September 14, 2015
This guest post was written by Adam Weiss and Judit Geller, European Roma Rights Centre. On 9 June 2015, a Chamber declared an application we submitted on behalf of a victim of forced sterilisation inadmissible. She had already received compensation from the domestic courts, depriving her (the unanimous Chamber found) of her victim status. You […]
August 04, 2015
Guest post by Katrine Thomasen, Legal Adviser for Europe, Center for Reproductive Rights. The Center for Reproductive Rights together with the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education (RFSU) submitted joint observations to the ECSR regarding the complaint. The European Committee of Social Rights (Committee) recently rejected a complaint filed by the Federation of Catholic Families in […]
July 21, 2015
By Salvo Nicolosi Last 7 July 2015, the Second Section of the Strasbourg Court ruled in V.M. and Others v. Belgium, concerning the violation of Articles 3 and 13 ECHR owing to the reception conditions of asylum seekers. The case must be placed within the settled case law on the protection of asylum seekers under […]
July 16, 2015
By Salvo Nicolosi and Ruth Delbaere (Ghent University) In the recent judgment of last 30 June 2015 in A.S. v. Switzerland, the European Court of Human Rights offers another occasion to reflect on the issue of vulnerability in asylum cases. The ruling represents another episode of the ongoing saga concerning the Dublin System to determine […]
July 02, 2015
Guest post by Kanstantsin Dzehtsiarou (University of Surrey) and Filippo Fontanelli (University of Edinburgh) On 30 June 2015, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgment in the case Khoroshenko v. Russia. With this decision, the Court set the boundaries of State regulation in the area of penitentiary policy, namely […]
June 18, 2015
By Dirk Voorhoof, Ghent University On 16 June 2015 the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights has delivered the long awaited final judgment in the case of Delfi AS v. Estonia, deciding on the liability of an online news portal for the offensive comments posted by its readers below one of its […]
June 09, 2015
By Corina Heri This guest post was written by Corina Heri, Ph.D. researcher at the University of Zürich, Switzerland, and visiting researcher at the Human Rights Centre, Ghent University. On the 28th of May, the Fifth Section of the Strasbourg Court issued its judgment in Y. v. Slovenia. The judgment in the Y. case ties in […]
June 02, 2015
By Lourdes Peroni What role do discriminatory insults play when the Court considers a certain instance of ill treatment in the light of Article 3? The answer seems to depend on which case one looks at. The role is that of “an aggravating factor,” if one looks at the recent judgment in Identoba and Others […]
May 20, 2015
By Yaiza Janssens In the recent case of I.P. v. the Republic of Moldova, the European Court of Human Rights examined state responsibility to establish an effective legal and judicial framework with regard to rape under Articles 3 and 8 of the Convention. In this post, I show that the Court failed to acknowledge that […]
May 13, 2015
By Helena De Vylder The ECtHR’s recent Helsinki Committee of Armenia v Armenia judgment deals with the refusal of local authorities to grant permission for the holding of a mourning march. However, the letter refusing the march was only received by the applicant organisation after the proposed date for the event. Since no domestic remedies […]
May 11, 2015
This guest post was written by Thalia Kruger, Senior Lecturer, Research Group Personal Rights and Real Rights, University of Antwerp and Honorary Research Associate, University of Cape Town. Adžić v. Croatia is yet another case in the long row of cases about international parental child abduction that hit the role of the European Court of Human […]
May 04, 2015
By Eva Brems The Court’s case law on the expulsion of very ill persons to their country of origin bothers many. The standard of ‘very exceptional circumstances’ set in N v United Kingdom (2008) is so high that no applicant to date has passed it. The only individual who has won a case of this […]
April 30, 2015
This guest post was written by Sarah Ganty, Ph.D. student at the Institute for European Studies and at the Faculty of Law (Perelman Centre for Legal Philosophy) of the ULB within the Research project ARC “Sous le signe du mérite et de la conformité culturelle, les nouvelles politiques d’intégration des immigrés en Europe”. See also […]