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In Defence of a More Sophisticated and Nuanced Approach To Abortion: A Response to Gregor Puppinck

Published on March 22, 2013        Author: 

Rumyana Grozdanova, Alice Panepinto and Konstantina Tzouvala are PhD Candidates at Durham University Law School, UK.

The primary purpose of this response is to re-evaluate the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (“the Court”) on abortion, which we found to be misrepresented in Mr Puppinck’s recent EJIL: Talk! piece. Even though the Court has admittedly not recognised a general right to abortion, it has systematically been pressing more conservative Member-States to respect their own legislation and relax the absolute prohibition of abortion under certain circumstances. While the Court may have been too shy in its push for expanded protection of women’s reproductive rights instead of having a more muscular approach, the trend is visible and is gaining momentum.  In this context, it is vital to appreciate the rulings of both domestic courts and the ECtHR on this issue in their entirety in order to have a comprehensive understanding of the current legal concerns and potential future solutions. The international human rights project seeks to provide fundamental freedoms and rights for each and all of us. Mr Puppinck’s attitude towards the ‘free will of women’ combined with his (mis)representation of abortion is not particularly constructive and his legal analysis is not sufficiently nuanced.

In the late 2012 P. and S. v. Poland case, the Court stated that Poland’s failure to protect a 14-year-old rape victim from harassment, due to her decision to have an abortion (available under Polish law in the circumstances), and the fact that legal proceedings were initiated against her for “illicit sexual relations”, amounted to violations of Art. 3 regarding inhuman and degrading treatment; of her right to privacy and family life (Article 8), to liberty and security (Art. 5 par. 1). Read the rest of this entry…

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Filed under: European Convention on Human Rights, Human Rights, Right to Life, Right To Privacy/Family Life
 

Russian Prisons: Still inhuman, Still degrading

Published on February 27, 2013        Author: 

Natasha Simonsen is a DPhil student in the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. She was previously a consultant to UNICEF and has interned with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Pakistan

This month, the European Court of Human Rights handed down two more judgments finding Russia to be in breach of Articles 3 and 13 of the Convention with respect to the appalling conditions in its remand centres, and the lack of a domestic remedy for claims of ill-treatment in detention. In the cases of Yefimenko (February 12) and Zuyev (February 19) (not to mention last month’s contribution in Reshetnyak, January 8) the Court’s First Section unanimously found violations of Articles 3 and 13 by the Russian Federation, yet again. These judgments are significant because they reflect the failure of the European Court’s ‘pilot judgment’ policy to stem the flow of applications by detainees in Russian prison and remand facilities.

The problem with Russian prisons is symptomatic of the wider issue of the clogging of the Court by so-called ‘repetitive applications’ (defined by the Court as those relating to ‘structural issues in which the Court has already delivered judgments finding a violation of the Convention and where a well-established case law exists’). This problem persists despite the various efforts by contracting states to reform the structural problems of the Court, and the Court’s introduction of a ‘priority policy’ to manage its extensive workload. The Court’s provisional annual report for 2012 (available here) admits there are almost 30,000 pending cases allocated to judicial formation against Russia alone. The second ‘worst offender’ is Turkey, with a little over half of that number, and Italy in a close third place with almost 15,000 pending cases (see p149 of the report). Those three states together account for almost half of the 128,000 cases currently pending before the Court. The violations by country-and-Article breakdown (p152-3 of the report), reveals that in 2012 there were 75 findings of violations of Article 3 by Russia last year, which amounts to 27% of the total number of Article 3 violations across the contracting states in that period. Russia has a serious problem in its detention centres—and it seems that the Court (not to mention the Council) has a serious problem with Russian compliance with the Convention. Read the rest of this entry…

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Filed under: European Convention on Human Rights, European Court of Human Rights, Human Rights
 

The European Court of Human Rights Gets It Right: A Comment on Eweida and Others v the United Kingdom

Published on January 19, 2013        Author: 

Dr Erica Howard is senior lecturer in law at Middlesex University and the author of Law and the Wearing of Religious Symbols: European Bans on the Wearing of Religious Symbols in Education (Routledge, 2012).

The European Court of Human Rights has delivered its Chamber judgment in the case of Eweida and Others v. the United Kingdom application nos. 48420/10, 59842/10, 51671/10 and 36516/10).

These cases concerned four practicing Christians. Ms Eweida, who worked for British Airways as check in staff, and Ms Chaplin, who worked as a nurse, both wanted to wear a cross in a visible way with their uniforms. Ms Ladele, a registrar of births, deaths and marriages, and Mr McFarlane, a relationship and psycho-sexual counsellor, both believed that homosexual relationships are contrary to God’s law and complained that they had been dismissed for refusing to carry out certain parts of their duties which they considered condoned homosexuality.

The European Court of Human Rights held that Ms Eweida’s and Ms Chaplin’s wish to wear a cross in a visible manner was a manifestation of their belief (paragraphs 89 and 97). In relation to Ms Eweida, the Court held that a fair balance had not been struck between her right to freely manifest her religion and British Airways wish to protect its corporate image and that the domestic courts had given too much weight to the latter (paragraph 94). Therefore, her right to manifest her religion under Article 9 was violated and it was not necessary to examine the claim under article 14 separately (paragraph 95).

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Filed under: EJIL Analysis, European Convention on Human Rights, Freedom of Religion, Prohibition of Discrimination
 
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Greek Court Acquits Immigrants who Escaped Appalling Detention Conditions

Published on January 12, 2013        Author: 

In the midst of ever deepening economic woes, Greece is struggling with yet another crisis, this time of a humanitarian character. It is no secret that thousands of immigrants crossing into Greece mainly from Asia and Africa are held in appalling conditions in Greek detention centres. The UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants visited such centres just before the end of 2012 and faced a bleak situation (the relevant report is still forthcoming, but see the Reuters report here), while the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights found already in January 2011 that returning an asylum seeker to Greece under Dublin II violates Article 3 of the ECHR (see M.S.S. v Belgium and Greece, paras 344 seq, along with a description of the horrible conditions of detention facing immigrants and asylum seekers in Greece).

Today, media in Greece are reporting that the single-judge formation of the Criminal Court of First Instance of Igoumenitsa in northwestern Greece (Μονομελές Πλημμελειοδικείο Ηγουμενίτσας) has returned a remarkable decision (Nr 682/2012) in a prosecution brought against a number of immigrants awaiting expulsion who escaped a local detention centre. Relevant reports in the Greek press can be found here and here, and a redacted version of the rather short decision is published here (all three documents are in Greek) Read the rest of this entry…

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Filed under: EJIL Reports, European Convention on Human Rights, Human Rights, Torture
 

The ECtHR Finds Macedonia Responsible in Connection with Torture by the CIA, but on What Basis?

Published on December 24, 2012        Author: 

André Nollkaemper is Professor of Public International Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Amsterdam. He directs the project on ‘Shared Responsibility in International Law’ (SHARES); this piece is cross-posted on the SHARES Blog.

On 13 December 2012, the European Court of Human Rights (‘the Court’) found the that the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (‘Macedonia’) was responsible in connection with the ill-treatment and torture of Khaled El-Masri. The judgment adds a further chapter to the Court’s rich case law on situations where a state party is held responsible in connection with the (wrongful) acts of another state.

El-Masri, a Lebanese-born German national, alleged that in the period from 31 December 2003 to 29 May 2004 he had been subjected to a secret rendition operation, in which agents of Macedonia had arrested him, held him incommunicado, questioned and ill-treated him, and handed him over at Skopje Airport to CIA agents who then transferred him to Afghanistan, where he had been detained and ill-treated for over four months.

No one who reads the facts of the case will argue with the Court’s conclusion that Macedonia had to bear international responsibility. The question is on what grounds one can base this conclusion.

The approach chosen by the Court may surprise many international lawyers. Influenced by decades of work of the International Law Commission (‘ILC’), their approach would be a combination of attribution of conduct on the one hand and the breach of an international obligation, on the other: Macedonia then would be responsible for handing over El-Masri to the CIA, in the face of risk (if not certainty) that he would be ill-treated and tortured. They would not normally say that the act of ill-treatment at the hands of the CIA itself is attributed to Macedonia, but limit Macedonia´s responsibility to its own wrongful conduct. This distinction may seem a legal nicety, but it may have practical relevance (for questions of evidence and reparation) and also reflects that what is essentially a sovereignty-based consideration: it should not easily be presumed that a state is responsible for acts committed by another subject of international law.

The Court takes a somewhat different approach. But it is quite difficult to figure out what exactly this approach is. While the fact that the Court does not feel compelled to follow the ILC´s conceptual straightjacket is in many respects refreshing, its own line is at times somewhat inconsistent and confusing. For one thing, it is difficult to see why the Court uses interchangeably the terms ´attribution´ and ´imputation´ – one may guess that the Court uses the latter when it seeks to leave aside the ILC´s approach, but it would be nice if the Court would not invite us to speculate.

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Filed under: EJIL Analysis, European Convention on Human Rights, Rendition, State Responsibility, Terrorism
 

No Detente on Prisoner Voting and the ECHR in the UK

Published on October 24, 2012        Author: 

In the wake of the European Court’s judgment last May in Scoppola v. Italy, in which it more or less gutted its prior cases on prisoner voting rights (see my previous post on prisoner voting and strategic judging for more background), the UK governmental structures have been debating how to respond in their long-drawn out altercation with Strasbourg. Scoppola essentially gave the UK an opening to end the dispute – all it needed to do to comply with the Court re-interpreted judgment in Hirst was to pass some essentially cosmetic changes to its existing legislation that would ‘strike the proper balance’.

The opportunity is not yet completely lost, if cooler heads prevail. The UK government is of course not monolithic, and some parts thereof would rather put the whole thing to rest. But that process is political more than it is legal, and after today’s performance by David Cameron at the PM questions in the House of Commons, a detente between the UK and Strasbourg seems increasingly unlikely.

“No one should be under any doubt – prisoners are not getting the vote under this government,” he told MPs, in answer to a leading question by a Labour MP strongly urging him to continue defying the Court. The whole exchange is available at BBC News, and the short video bears watching, if nothing else then for witnessing the extent of the cheers among the assembled parliamentarians in support of the Prime Minister’s position.

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Filed under: EJIL Analysis, European Convention on Human Rights, European Court of Human Rights
 

Grand Chamber Judgment in Catan and Others

Published on October 21, 2012        Author: 

On Friday the European Court of Human Rights delivered its Grand Chamber judgment in Catan and Others v. Moldova and Russia, nos. 43370/04, 8252/05 and 18454/06, yet another case on the ECHR’s extraterritorial application, dealing in particular with the Convention’s application to the separatist republic of Trandniestria in Moldova (link to judgment). The case is in effect a sequel to the Court’s earlier judgments on Transdniestria in Ilascu and Ivantoc, this time dealing however with a significantly different factual pattern.

The applicants were Moldovans who lived in Transdniestria and who were at the time of lodging the application pupils at three Moldovan-language schools and their parents. They complained under Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention and Article 8 of the Convention, taken alone and in conjunction with Article 14 about the closure of their schools and their harassment by the separatist Transdniestrian authorities. The reason for this harassment was basically a policy of Russification by the Transdniestrian authorities whereby schools in the region could only operate in and teach the Moldovan (i.e. Romanian) language as written in the Cyrillic alphabet, rather than the much more commonly used Latin one. In short, the applicants’ education became embroilled in language politics, very similar for instance to those in the Balkans.

What makes this case particularly interesting is the relationship between Article 1 ECHR notion of state jurisdiction, as the threshold for the existence of (all or some) state obligations under the Convention, and the attribution of conduct under the secondary rules of the law of state responsibility. In Ilascu, paras 392-3, the Court held that

[T]he “MRT” [Transdniestria], set up in 1991-92 with the support of the Russian Federation, vested with organs of power and its own administration, remains under the effective authority, or at the very least under the decisive influence, of the Russian Federation, and in any event that it survives by virtue of the military, economic, financial and political support given to it by the Russian Federation. … [T]here is a continuous and uninterrupted link of responsibility on the part of the Russian Federation for the applicants’ fate, as the Russian Federation’s policy of support for the regime and collaboration with it continued beyond 5 May 1998, and after that date the Russian Federation made no attempt to put an end to the applicants’ situation brought about by its agents, and did not act to prevent the violations allegedly committed after 5 May 1998.

Ilascu was notable for several reasons. First, it apparently applied the spatial model of Article 1 jurisdiction as control of an area while lowering the threshold of the needed control (the ‘decisive influence’ bit). Secondly, it completely confused jurisdiction with responsibility; it was utterly unclear from the case whether the Court considered all acts of the MRT to be attributable to Russia, apparently on the basis of a sui generis rule on attribution of conduct that hardly seemed compliant with the ILC’s work on state responsibility or the jurisprudence of the ICJ, or rather whether Russia was held responsible for failing to comply with a positive obligation to prevent human rights violations by non-state actors (the MRT) operating in an area under its jurisdiction. Third, the Court also found that Moldova had positive obligations in the MRT despite having lost control of the territory, a (human rights-friendly) ruling that in my view compromised the purely factual nature of the Art 1 jurisdictional tests for the sake of a rather vague positive obligation which did not amount to much in practice anyway.

Here comes Catan, which provided the Court with the opportunity to revisit some of these points. What distinguishes Catan and Ilascu is primarily the lapse in time with regard to the facts of the two cases, during which Russia’s control over Transdniestria arguably decreased. Moreover, unlike in Ilascu Russian authorities had no involvement in the harassment of the applicants and the interference with their right to education. The Court thus had to build upon Ilascu, and that it did, producing a rather mixed (if again human rights-friendly) outcome. In brief, it found that both Moldova and Russia retained jurisdiction over Transdniestria; that Moldova this time did comply with its positive obligations; but that Russia was to be held reponsible for a violation of Art 2 of Protocol 1, and was as a consequence liable for significant damages.

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Filed under: EJIL Analysis, European Convention on Human Rights, European Court of Human Rights, Extraterritorial Application
 

The Innocence of Satirists: Will Caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad Change the ECHR Approach to Hate Speech?

Published on September 26, 2012        Author: 

Dr David Keane is Senior Lecturer in Law at Middlesex University.

The global reaction to the trailer for the film The Innocence of Muslims has prompted the banning of the video-sharing website Youtube in three States, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, with Council of Europe member Russia mooting such a move. Similarly the publication of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in France, and the resulting international protests, appear to reignite questions of religious defamation and freedom of expression generated by Jyllands-Posten in 2006. To a certain extent the arguments appear unchanged, but there are elements to these recent controversies worth exploring.

Charlie Hebdo has already been in the French courts, in 2007, but was acquitted, while the Danish Public Prosecutor decided not to pursue criminal proceedings against Jyllands-Posten. Yet the debate this time around seems less strident in terms of freedom of expression. The BBC points to a somewhat divided French press, albeit one that emphasises freedom of expression within the parameters of the law, with one paper asking whether these are “some cartoons too many”. This is significant given that newspapers of all political colours are the frontline on freedom of expression. Guy Birenbaum on the Huffington Post (only available in French) writes: “Come on Charlie, just between ourselves, you don’t have the feeling that this is old hat? Already seen, already read? Where is the subversion, the insolence, and most of all, the humour?” He concludes that mocking Islam has become something of a national sport in France and as a result has lost its subversive value. In this atmosphere, a prosecution appears a little more possible.

Such a prosecution would almost certainly be challenged before the European Court of Human Rights. Article 10 of the European Convention reads:  “1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression… without interference by public authority … 2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society… for the protection of the reputation or rights of others (…)”

In order to uphold the cartoonists’ rights under Article 10(1), the Court would have to go against its past jurisprudence and rule the interference unnecessary under Article 10(2). That would mark a new departure in terms of the European approach to hate speech, which has, perhaps understandably, been marked by the World War II experience and consistently upheld convictions for speech which attacks racial, ethnic or religious groups, or denies wartime atrocities.

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Filed under: EJIL Analysis, European Convention on Human Rights, European Court of Human Rights, Freedom of Expression
 

European Court Decides Nada v. Switzerland

Published on September 14, 2012        Author: 

As announced, the Grand Chamber’s judgment in Nada v. Switzerland, no. 10593/08 is available here. I can’t blog about it more extensively as I’m in Valencia right now for the ESIL conference, but the gist of the judgment is as a follows:

1) The applicant wins, on relatively narrow grounds under Article 8, and more broadly under Article 13 of the Convention. When examining Article 8, the Court engages in its assessment of the relationship between the ECHR and state obligations under the UN Charter, specifically UNSC resolution, and the effect of the supremacy clause in Article 103 of the Charter.

2) In that regard, the Court quite correctly finds that while the applicant’s listing by the Sanctions Committee of the UNSC was attributable to the UN, the implementation of the sanctions by Switzerland was attributable to Swtizerland itself (para. 121). The Court then finds (para. 122) that:

The measures in issue were therefore taken in the exercise by Switzerland of its “jurisdiction” within the meaning of Article 1 of the Convention. The impugned acts and omissions are thus capable of engaging the respondent State’s responsibility under the Convention. It also follows that the Court has jurisdiction ratione personae to entertain the present application.

Note that the Court here skirts the non-obvious question of the ECHR’s extraterritorial application (a point that as far as I am aware was not argued by the respondent government). That the implementation of the travel ban imposed against the applicant and Switzerland’s decision to deny him access to Swiss territory in order to leave the 1.6 sq km Italian enclave of Campione were undoubtedly attributable to Switzerland does not ipso facto entail that the applicant had rights vis-a-vis Switzerland under the Convention; the former is an issue of attribution of conduct, the latter of the threshold criterion for the existence of a legal obligation. The Court does not explain under what theory exactly the applicant had rights against Switzerland even though he does not live in Switzerland proper, nor how its position is to be squared with its prior case law on the matter (cf. Bankovic in particular, Al-Skeini notwithstanding).

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Filed under: Effective Remedy, EJIL Analysis, European Convention on Human Rights, European Court of Human Rights, Right To Privacy/Family Life
 

Nada v. Switzerland Judgment Forthcoming

Published on September 3, 2012        Author: 

The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights will deliver its judgment in the case of Nada v. Switzerland on 12 September. The case concerns the applicant being prohibited from leaving an Italian enclave in Switzerland due to Swiss implementation of UN Security Council anti-terrorism sanctions, including a travel ban. For our previous coverage and a detailed preview of the issues arising in the case, see this post. More commentary will follow.

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Filed under: EJIL Reports, European Convention on Human Rights, European Court of Human Rights
 
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