June 02, 2026
By Grażyna Baranowska, Jill Alpes and Isabel Kienzle Pushbacks are practices which result in migrants being forced across borders without an individual assessment of their protection needs. While they are a persistent feature at many European borders, the facts surrounding pushbacks often remain invisible in the ECtHR judgments. Our recent article in the International Journal […]
April 28, 2026
by Ananya Kumar-Banerjee Introduction On 3 February 2026, the European Court of Human Rights (“Strasbourg”) handed down OH and Others v Serbia (No. 57185/17) (“OH and Others”). Strasbourg considered whether the Serbian Government’s pushback of seventeen migrants into Bulgaria was in breach of the European Convention. Ultimately, the Court held that Serbia had breached Articles […]
February 20, 2026
by Ergün Cakal What is the adequate level of healthcare in prison? How are judges to make such assessments (and how well placed are they to do so anyway)? How is a prisoner’s own refusal of treatment to be weighed in that assessment? When does a lack of healthcare require that a prisoner be released? […]
September 05, 2025
by Alex Geraki Trimi The case of Almukhlas and Al-Maliki v. Greece concerned the interception of a yacht carrying 94 migrants near the Greek island of Symi by members of the Greek Coast Guard and Frontex (under the Joint operation Poseidon) that resulted in the killing of a child of Iraqi nationality, Ameer, by the […]
October 25, 2024
by Dr. iur. Yasir Gökce The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) pronounced recently an interesting judgment in the Yasak case, which appears to negate many of its conclusions in the landmark Yalcinkaya ruling. In the latter judgment, the Court characterised the practice of the Turkish judiciary to equate the alleged download or use of […]
March 24, 2023
Dmitry Kurnosov Russia’s expulsion from the Council of Europe (‘CoE’) and, consequently, from the European Convention system has left almost 17 thousand cases pending before the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’, ‘the Court’). That number will rise further as the Court has declared that it will accept applications concerning acts and omissions under Russian […]
June 02, 2022
[This post first appeared on the DISSECT blog.] Introduction It has been three months since Europe woke up to the horrific news that Russia had launched a brutal invasion of neighbouring Ukraine—two months during which Ukraine has seen immeasurable suffering and destruction, and two months which have dramatically changed Europe’s human rights landscape. It is […]
October 08, 2021
By Dr Cornelia Klocker Does the finding of an ineffective investigation and a violation of the duty to cooperate compensate for a non-engagement with the substantive limb of Article 2 ECHR? Natalia Estemirova was one of the most prominent human rights defenders in Chechnya, investigating and documenting cases of enforced disappearances, abductions, torture and extrajudicial […]
September 28, 2021
By Dr. Ramute Remezaite The significance of evidence in the adjudication of individual human rights complaints by the European Court of Human Rights (Court) is indisputable: the Court will normally rely on the evidence provided by the parties and the facts established in the domestic judicial proceedings. In some instances, such as those relating to […]
November 27, 2020
Tobias Thienel, associated fellow at the Walther Schücking Institute of International Law at the University of Kiel, Germany, and lawyer with Weissleder Ewer* A classic staple of the cop show genre has the detective ‘roughing up’ a stubborn defendant in order to produce a confession. This somewhat hackneyed story line never had much to do […]