European Court of Human Rights

European Court of Human Rights building in Strasbourg

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) (French: Cour européenne des droits de l’homme) in Strasbourg was established under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) of 1950 to monitor compliance by Contracting Parties. The European Convention on Human Rights, or formally named Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, is one of the most important conventions adopted by the Council of Europe. All 47 member states of the Council of Europe are contracting parties of the Convention. Applications against Contracting Parties for human rights violations can be brought before the Court either by other States Parties or by individuals.

History and structure

The Court was instituted as a permanent court with full-time judges on 1 November 1998, replacing the then existing enforcement mechanisms, which included the European Commission of Human Rights (created in 1954) and the European Court of Human Rights, which had been created in 1959.

The Court delivered its first judgment in 1960, Lawless v. Ireland.

The new format of the Court was the result of the ratification of Protocol 11, an amendment to the Convention that was ratified in November 1998. The new full-time Judges were subsequently elected by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

By the time Protocol No. 11 entered into force on 1 November 1998 establishing a full-time Court and opening up direct access to the Court for 800 million Europeans, the Court had delivered 837 judgments. Seven years on at the end of 2005 the Court had delivered 5,968 judgments.

All member states of the Council of Europe have to sign and ratify the Convention. The court consists of a number of judges equal to the number of Contracting Parties, which currently stand at 47. Each judge is elected in respect of a Contracting Party by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Despite this correspondence, however, there are no nationality requirements for judges (e.g. a Swiss national is elected in respect of Liechtenstein). Judges are assumed to be impartial arbiters, rather than representatives of any country. Judges are elected to six-year terms. They can be re-elected.

The court is divided into five "Sections", each of which consists of a geographic and gender-balanced selection of justices. The entire court elects a President and five Section Presidents, two of whom also serve as Vice-Presidents of the court. All terms last for three years. Each section selects a Chamber, which consists of the Section President and a rotating selection of six other justices. The court also maintains a 17-member Grand Chamber, which consists of the President, Vice-Presidents, and Section Presidents, in addition to a rotating selection of justices from one of two balanced groups. The selection of judges alternates between the groups every nine months.

On 18 September 2008, the Court has delivered its 10 000th judgment, Takhayeva and Others v. Russia (no. 23286/04). The Strasbourg Court found violations of Articles 2 (right to life), 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment), 5 (right to liberty and security) and 13 (right to an effective remedy) of the European Convention on Human Rights concerning the applicants’ complaint that their relative disappeared after being abducted from their village in Chechnya by Russian servicemen.

Procedure

Complaints of violations by member states are filed in Strasbourg, and are assigned to a Section. Each complaint is first heard by a committee of three judges, which may unanimously vote to strike any complaint without further examination. Once past committee, the complaint is heard and decided by a full Chamber. Decisions of great importance may be appealed to the Grand Chamber. Any decision of the court is binding on the member states and must be complied with^[1], except if it consists of an advisory opinion^[2]

It is the role of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe to supervise the execution of court judgments, though it has no formal means of using force against member countries in order to comply. However, the ultimate sanction of non-compliance is expulsion from the Council of Europe and thus becoming a 'pariah' state within Europe. Furthermore, the European Union takes a keen interest in the Convention and Court (and its jurisprudence) so would not look kindly upon any EU member state that did not fulfill its Convention obligations.

Judges

As of 16 May 2007 (in order of precedence):^[3]

Name	Country	Position	Elected	Term Ends
Jean-Paul Costa	France	President	1998	2010
Christos Rozakis	Greece	Vice-President	1998	2010
Sir Nicolas Bratza	United Kingdom	Vice-President	1998	2010
Peer Lorenzen	Danemark	Section President	1998	2010
Françoise Tulkens	Belgium	Section President	1998	2010
Josep Casadevall	Andorra	Section President	1998	2010
Giovanni Bonello	Malta	Judge	1998	2010
Loukis Loucaides	Cyprus	Judge	1998	2010
Ireneu Cabral Barreto	Portugal	Judge	1998	2010
Riza Türmen	Turkey	Judge	1998	2010
Corneliu Bîrsan	Romania	Judge	1998	2010
Karel Jungwiert	Czech Republic	Judge	1998	2010
Volodymyr Butkevych	Ukraine	Judge	1998	2010
Boštjan Zupančič	Slovenia	Judge	1998	2010
Nina Vajić	Croatia	Judge	1998	2010
Margarita Tsatsa-Nikolovska	Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia	Judge	1998	2010
András Baka	Hungary	Ad Litem Judge	1998	2010
Rait Maruste	Estonia	Ad Litem Judge	1998	2010
Kristaq Traja	Albania	Ad Litem Judge	1998	2010
Snejana Botoucharova	Bulgaria	Ad Litem Judge	1998	2010
Mindia Ugrekhelidze	Georgia	Ad Litem Judge	1999	2011
Anatoly Kovler	Russia	Ad Litem Judge	1999	2011
Vladimiro Zagrebelsky	Italy	Ad Litem Judge	2001	2007
Antonella Mularoni	San Marino	Ad Litem Judge	2001	2007
Elisabeth Steiner	Austria	Ad Litem Judge	2001	2007
Stanislav Pavlovschi	Moldova	Ad Litem Judge	2001	2007
Lech Garlicki	Poland	Ad Litem Judge	2002	2008
Javier Borrego Borrego	Spain	Ad Litem Judge	2003	2009
Elisabet Fura-Sandström	Sweden	Ad Litem Judge	2003	2009
Alvina Gyulumyan	Armenia	Ad Litem Judge	2003	2009
Khanlar Hajiyev	Azerbaijan	Ad Litem Judge	2004	2010
Ljiljana Mijović	Bosnia and Herzegovina	Ad Litem Judge	2004	2010
Renate Jaeger	Germany	Ad Litem Judge	2004	2010
Egbert Myjer	Netherlands	Ad Litem Judge	2004	2010
Sverre Erik Jebens	Norway	Ad Litem Judge	2004	2010
Davið Þór Björgvinsson	Iceland	Ad Litem Judge	2004	2010
Danutė Jočienė	Lithuania	Ad Litem Judge	2004	2010
Ján Šikuta	Slovakia	Ad Litem Judge	2004	2010
Dragoljub Popović	Serbia	Ad Litem Judge	2005	2011
Ineta Ziemele	Latvia	Ad Litem Judge	2005	2011
Mark Villiger	Liechtenstein	Ad Litem Judge	2006	2012
Isabelle Berro-Lefevre	Monaco	Ad Litem Judge	2006	2012
Päivi Hirvelä	Finland	Ad Litem Judge	2007	2013
Giorgio Malinverni	Switzerland	Ad Litem Judge	2007	2013

The Plenary Court elects the Registrar and one or more Deputy Registrars. The Registrar is the head of the Registry, which performs legal and administrative tasks and drafts decisions and judgments on behalf of the Court. The Registrar and Deputy Registrar as of 4 January 2007^[3] are:

• Erik Fribergh, Registrar ( Sweden)
• Michael O’Boyle, Deputy Registrar ( Ireland)

Sections

Reform

Due to the increase in awareness of European citizens of their rights under the Convention, the Court was becoming a victim of its own success. Some cases were taking up to five years before being decided and there is a significant backlog. For example, according to the Human Rights Information Bulletin (issued by the Council of Europe), between 1 November 2003 and 29 February 2004 the Court dealt with 7315 cases, of which 6255 were declared inadmissible.

Working on the principle that 'justice delayed is justice denied', the Council of Europe set up a working party to consider ways of improving the efficiency of the Court. This resulted in an amendment to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, Protocol 14. This new protocol, which requires universal ratification by all Council of Europe member states to come into force, makes a number of changes:

• A single judge can decide on a case's admissibility. Currently, three judges decide.
• Where cases are broadly similar to ones brought previously before the Court, and are essentially due to a member state failing to change their domestic law to correct a failing highlighted by that previous judgement, the case can be decided by three judges rather than the seven-judge Chamber.
• A case may not be admissible if it is considered that the applicant has not suffered 'significant disadvantage'. However, this is not a 'hard and fast' rule.
• A member state can be brought before the court by the Committee of Ministers if that state refuses to enforce a judgment against it.
• The Committee of Ministers can ask the Court for an 'interpretation' of a judgement to help determine the best way for a member state to comply with it.

Amnesty International has expressed concern that these changes to the admissibility criteria will mean individuals may lose the ability to 'gain redress for human rights violations'.^[5]

Notable cases

In December 1977, the court ruled that the government of the United Kingdom was guilty of "inhuman and degrading treatment", of men interned without trial, by the court, following a case brought by the Republic of Ireland (Case No. 5310/71). The court found that while their internment was a violation of the convention rights, it was justifiable in the circumstances; it however ruled that the practice of the five techniques and the practice of beating prisoners constituted inhumane and degrading punishment in violation of the convention, although not torture.^[6]

In 1980, the court ruled out the foetal right to sue the mother carrying the foetus. In Paton v. United Kingdom, it was discovered that the life of foetus is "intimately connected with, and cannot be regarded in isolation from, the life of the pregnant woman".

In 2003 and 2004, the court ruled that "that sharia is incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy" (13/02/2003),^[7] because the sharia rules on inheritance, women's rights and religious freedom violate human rights as established in the European Convention on Human Rights.

In 2006, the court denied admissibility of the applications of former Soviet secret services operatives convicted in Estonia for Stalinist crimes against humanity after Estonia became independent in 1991. See also European Court of Human Rights cases on Occupation of Baltic States.

Since the Russian military invaded Chechnya for the second time in 1999, the court has agreed to hear cases of human rights abuse brought forward by Chechen civilians against Russia in the course of the Second Chechen War, with 31 rulings to date as of June 2008 (including regarding the cases of torture and extrajudicial executions).^[8] In 2007, for example, the Court ruled that Russia was responsible for the killings of a human rights activist Zura Bitiyeva and her family.^[9] Bitiyeva herself had filed a complaint against Moscow with the ECHR in 2000 for abuse while in detention, in then-second case from Chechnya, but she was murdered in 2003 before the ruling was issued.^[10] Other cases ruled against Russia included the deaths (or presumed deaths after years of forced disappearance) of Ruslan Alikhadzhyev, Shakhid Baysayev, Nura Luluyeva and Khadzhi-Murat Yandiyev, the case of the indiscriminate bombing of Katyr-Yurt, and some of the deaths during the Novye Aldi massacre. As of 2008, ECHR has been flooded by a complaints from Chechnya, what the Human Rights Watch called "the last hope for the victims".^[8]

Other cases

• Dudgeon v. United Kingdom: sodomy and the right to privacy
• McLibel case: legal aid in libel cases
• Murray v. United Kingdom: anti-terrorism laws
• John Murray v. United Kingdom: right to silence
• Funke v. France: right to a fair trial
• List of ECtHR cases concerning legal ethics
• List of LGBT-related cases
• ASLEF v. United Kingdom: right of unions to expel members
• Church of Scientology Moscow versus Russia^[11]
• Soering v. United Kingdom: extradition, right against inhuman and degrading treatment

Architecture

The building, which houses the court chambers and Registry (administration and référendaires), was designed by the Richard Rogers Partnership and completed in 1995. The design is meant to reflect, amongst other things, the two distinct components of the Commission and Court (as it then was). Wide scale use of glass emphasises the 'openness' of the court to European citizens.

See also

• African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights - regional court established in 2006
• European Court of Human Rights cases
• Human rights in Europe
• Inter-American Court of Human Rights - regional court established in 1979

Notes

External links

• Official website
• information for applicants
• Court judgements, decisions and case law website
• Rules of the Court (PDF)
• Case-processing flowchart (PDF)(before Protocol 14)
• Text of Protocol 14
• "Chechens taking Russia to court" - BBC News
• European Court of Human Rights condemns Russia in media case - IFEX
• How Russia hijacks the European Court of Human Rights (with references at Ilaşcu case)

Institutions of the Council of Europe Secretary General of the Council of Europe · Committee of Ministers · Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe · Congress of the Council of Europe · European Court of Human Rights · Commissioner for Human Rights · European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice