Strasbourg Observers

View posts from: LGBTQI+ Rights

  • Marie-Hélène Peter-Spiess

A.L. v. France: Domestic Surrogacy, Genetic Fatherhood, and the Best Interests of the Child

February 10, 2023

By Marie-Hélène Peter-Spiess[1] In its recent judgment A.L. v. France, the European Court of Human Rights (the “ECtHR” or the “Court”) looked into the issue of domestic surrogacy and legal fatherhood in a situation where two paternal figures are on the line. More specifically, the case featured a surrogacy-born child that the surrogate entrusted to […]

  • Nikos Koumoutzis

D.B. and Others v. Switzerland: Tracing the Origins of the Right to Recognition of Same-Sex Parentage in International Surrogacy

December 23, 2022

by Nikos Koumoutzis Since 2014, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has been hearing cross-border surrogacy cases concerning the right to recognition of parentage of the child with its intended parents within the framework of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). A fairly large number of such cases have been reported already, and […]

  • Margarita S. Ilieva

Oganezova v. Armenia: Purposive homophobia in a deprived legal environment

August 12, 2022

By Margarita S. Ilieva. The author is an equality litigator and analyst focused on hate and stereotyping victims (see, for Strasbourg Observers, J.L. v. Italy: A survivor of trivictimisation and The Rights of Others in Cases of Othering: Anti-victim Bias in ECHR Case Law?). She litigated Oganezova as an EHRAC lawyer. On IDAHO 2022, the Court delivered […]

  • Pieter Cannoot

Y. v. Poland: ECtHR case law on gender recognition remains embedded in cisnormativity

April 07, 2022

By Pieter Cannoot On 17 February 2022, the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgment in the case of Y. v. Poland. The Court unanimously found no violation of Article 8 of the Convention (ECHR), and no violation of Article 14 taken together with Article 8. The case concerned a trans man who had […]

  • Dr. Ingrida Milkaite and dr. Pieter Cannoot

A.M. and Others v. Russia: Representation of children before the ECtHR

November 12, 2021

By Dr. Ingrida Milkaite and dr. Pieter Cannoot 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 on the parental rights of a transgender person, in which the Human Rights Centre submitted a third party intervention (earlier blogpost summarising our […]

  • Guest Blogger

X and Y v. Romania: the ‘impossible dilemma’ reasoning applied to gender affirming surgery as a requirement for gender recognition

February 25, 2021

By Sarah Schoentjes, PhD Researcher at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University, and Dr. Pieter Cannoot, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University and Visiting Professor at the University of Antwerp In the case of X and Y v. Romania, the ECtHR has declared one more abusive requirement for gender recognition […]

  • 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 […]