100 posts
Censorship, surveillance and ACTA in European Parliament
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IT exports for web censorship, Internet surveillance and other trade matters will be discussed in the European Parliament. Thursday, 8 February 2012, the Committee on International Trade (INTA) of the European Parliament arranges a workshop on Intern...
EFD Rights Watch: Turkey, the country with most convictions at the European Court of Human Rights in 2011
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Country with the most Convictions: Turkey from Bianet :: English The majority of judgements delivered by the European Court of Human Rights in 2011 concerned Turkey. Most of these decisions were related to violations of the right to a fair trial and...
The Council of Europe: UK Diplomatic and Parliamentary Excellence
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Sam Kelly, political officer at the UK Delegation in Strasbourg, reports on a busy week for post which included a visit by the Prime Minister to argue the UK’s case for reforming the European Court of Human Rights: Reform of the European Court of H...
Blogging from Davos – I meet Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary-General of the Council of Europe
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On Wednesday I promised to keep you updated on my meeting today in Davos with Mr Thorbjørn Jagland, the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe. As I expected, it was a very fruitful meeting. We discussed the developments regarding media freedom...
The Court's Annual Report 2011
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Today, at the opening of the judicial year in Strasbourg, the Annual Report and an overview of facts and figures for 2011 were presented. This includes a table of violations (by country). It reveals that the top five of countries against which judgme...
Human Rights Court under fire
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For many British politicians and for much of the UK press, the European Court of Human Rights is the very embodiment of foreign meddling in British life. Two particular findings of the Court have stirred passions in Britain: a 2005 ruling that anyone...
Human Rights Court under fire
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For many British politicians and for much of the UK press, the European Court of Human Rights is the very embodiment of foreign meddling in British life. Two particular findings of the Court have stirred passions in Britain: a 2005 ruling that anyone...
Human rights: Cameron's message to Europe | Francesca Klug
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The European court of human rights is not all David Cameron has his sights onTory backbenchers hoping for sabre-rattling by David Cameron at Strasbourg on Wednesday, when he delivered his speech on reform of the European court of human rights, will h...
Latest developments on media freedom in Hungary
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I am on my way to the World Economic Forum in Davos where I will present my plans for setting up the European Cloud Partnership – but more on that in the coming days. I first wanted to share the latest news with you regarding the situation of media...
David Cameron’s stance on the European Court of Human Rights would make Winston Churchill turn in his grave
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In what seems like a follow-up to his stupidly short-sighted refusal to join all 26 other EU leaders in signing up to treaty change at the summit in Brussels on 9 December last year, David Cameron is again displaying his … Continue reading U...
PACE Resolution on Authority and Effectiveness of ECHR
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Yesterday, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted the report 'Guaranteeing the authority and effectiveness of the European Convention on Human Rights', on which I earlier blogged here in November. The accompanying resoluti...
Making the European Court of Human Rights work better
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This week is a big week for the UK in Strasbourg. We are 11 weeks into our 6 month Chairmanship of the Council of Europe. We are pressing ahead with our wide-ranging Chairmanship priorities, in particular our ambitious package of reforms for the Euro...
Human rights violations continue in China
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China´s communist government continues its shameful crackdown on human rights in 2012:The Chinese government recently sentenced three prominent activists to lengthy prison sentences, confirming that human rights standards in the count...
Articles in EHRLR
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Three issues of the European Human Rights Law Review of 2011 (on which issues I did not yet report) include a number of articles on the European Convention on Human Rights. Here is an overview. In issue 3:* Sophie Briant, Dialogue, diplomacy and defi...
What has the ECtHR done for the UK lately?
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A detailed report, written by veteran Parliamentary legal researcher Robert Broardhurst, and commissioned by a group of backbench Conservative MPs including Chris Heaton-Harris MP and Andrea Leadsom MP, has called for action on the European Court of...
Door Gevaarlijke Gekken Omringd III
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The world has gone mad once again. In a 6-1 ruling, the second chamber of the European Court for Human Rights held yesterday that the 1994-2009 garbage collection mess in Campania, Italy was a violation of citizens' rights under art. 8 ECHR. I can se...
New Academic ECHR Publications
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At the start of the new year a very wide range of articles and publications on the European Convention and the European Court (see the overview below). A very good year to all readers!* Yonatan Lupu and Erik Voeten, 'Precedent in International Courts...
Amnesty International Report: Year of Rebellion – The State of Human Rights in the Middle East and North Africa
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Amnesty International this morning released a report entitled “Year of Rebellion – The State of Human Rights in the Middle East and North Africa” focusing on the events of 2011 in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, and Iraq. Additi...
In Belarus, the freedom of the internet is at stake | Mike Harris
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Europe's last dictatorship is clamping down on online activism, with a new law effectively requiring everyone to be a state spyAs of this morning, the internet in Belarus got smaller. A draconian new law is in force that allows the authorities to pro...
Human Rights in the Context of Changes in the World Order
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In the end of the year people tend to reflect on the passed year. I chose to reflect the main ideas expressed by me at a lecture about human rights that I read to my students on the 18th of November 2011 at the University of Tartu which lecture partl...
Amnesty International – is discrimination against some victims apparent?
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Amnesty International (AI) mission statement: “to undertake research and action focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination&...
in the mean time, deputy PM, under whose government thousands of Kurdish activists are imprisoned, vows more rights for Kurds… A politics roundup…
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Deputy PM vows more rights for Turkey’s Kurds from Hurriyet Daily News Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç promises more rights to the country’s citizens of Kurdish origin in a speech… Journalists detained in KCK raids Police detai...
Op-Ed on European Court
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Emma Bonino (member of the Italian Senate and former European commissioner) and James Goldston (executive director of Open Society Justice Initiative) have added their voices to the debate about the European Court of Human Rights. In an Op-Ed publish...
Murat Eliboz, latest victim of Turkish State’s assault against Kurds… EFD Rights Watch
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Murat Eliboz, 21, a university student and survivor of Van earthquake has been shot dead behind by police forces at the pro Kurdish BDP rally in Diyarbakır…. No news in English or an image of Murat Eliboz, I could find… May his soul rest...
Shortlist for new Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner announced
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Strasbourg, 25.11.2011 - The Council of Europe Committee of Ministers has submitted a shortlist of three candidates for the post of Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner to the Organisation’s Parliamentary Assembly. The candidates are:- Pi...
Fighting fascism in the XXI century
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The human kind should never forget the suffering and pain associated with national socialism. From the numerous atrocities to the deep scars in the memories of many, the results of national socialism should never be overlooked. Condemnation of those...
Guest Post on British ECHR Reform Plans
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I am very happy to welcome another guest post of Ed Bates of the University of Southampton. This time it relates to the reform plans for the Court of the current British chairmanship of the Council of Europe: British plans for reform of the European...
Amnesty International and the White Tweeter's Burden
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Want to free all humankind from bondage and usher in a new era of global liberty? There's an app for that. At least, according to Amnesty International there is. In a new advertising campaign, flagged up today in Ad Week magazine, Amnesty tells us we...
Paper on Draft EU to ECHR Accession Agreement
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Three researchers, Xavier Groussot, Tobias Lock, and Laurent Pech, have published a commentary on the draft agreement on the Accession of the EU to the European Convention on Human Rights. The commentary is available as a policy paper on the website...
BBC Radio Four: Britain and the Human Rights Act
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The Human Rights Act 1998, which transposes the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, is controversal in British politics: the Liberal Democrats and Labour are for the HRA, while the Conservatives are against. The Conservatives want to bri...
S.H. and Others v Austria: margin of appreciation and IVF
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In Austria, it is forbidden to use donated sperm or ova for in vitro fertilization (‘IVF’). Ovum donation is under all circumstances prohibited; sperm donation is only possible when the sperm is directly placed in the womb of a woman (in vivo art...
Book on ECHR and Fundamental Rights Interpretation
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Yesterday, I attended the successful PhD defence of Hanneke Senden, a former colleague of mine (congratulations once again, Hanneke!), at Leiden University. Her book deals with the different principles and methods of fundamental rights interpretation...
EFD Rights Watch: Ersanlı & Zarakolu arrests; Turkey now practically an authoritarian country…
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Intellectuals Arrested For Speaking At Public Meeting by Jenny White Ragip Zarakolu, Photo from Hurriyet/DHA 44 People Arrested – among them Ersanlı and Zarakolu 44 out of 50 people who were taken into police custody were arrested on 1 Novemb...
Police Against Protesters: Sadism or Politics?
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The day after several marches and rallies by the “Occupy Wall Street” movement in New York City, The New York Times reported that “two dozen people were arrested at a Citibank branch on LaGuardia Place on trespassing charges. Some witnesses sai...
A History of Violations in Statistics per State
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The European Court of Human Rights has published an online statistical overview of its entire history of judgments grouped per state in pie charts 'Statistics on Judgments per State'. It covers the whole period of 1959 to 2010. For each country it sh...
European Yearbook on Human Rights 2011 Published
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The newest edition of the European Yearbook on Human Rights (2011) has been published. The yearbook includes a very wide range of articles on human rights, including a number on the ECHR. This is the abstract:In the human rights field, 2010 was a yea...
Human Rights Education Guidelines for Secondary School Systems Under Development
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A Human Rights Education Guidelines process is underway for the elaboration of principles of practice in relation to carrying out human rights education (HRE) in secondary schools. Guidelines are also under development for human rights education and...
European Data Protection & Privacy Conference
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The 2nd Annual European Data Protection & Privacy Conference will take place in Brussels on the 6th of December 2011. The programme includes keynote presentations by Viviane Reding (on the view from the European Commission) and Cameron Kerry (on...
M.S.S. Judgment Echoes in Luxemburg
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At the beginning of this year, the European Court of Human Rights issued its important M.S.S. v. Belgium and Greece judgment, on the asylum seekers transfer system within the European Union (see my earlier report here). In summary, the Court held tha...
DADT repeal: US joins the Western world
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Yesterday America's infamous Don't Ask, Don't Tell ban on gays in the military was officially repealed. It was a hard-fought battle for the Democratic Party, and the Obama administration was keen to publicize the fulfillment of one of the president's...
New ECHR Articles
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A few new academic articles and papers concerning the ECHR have become available online. The first is an article on human trafficking entitled 'Complementary Protection for Victims of Human Trafficking under the European Convention on Human Rights' p...
Mail still confused over the ECHR
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When the European Commission's London office sent the following note to several newsdesks at the end of the last year, they must have thought it was the end of the matter: Information note to Newsdesks: European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is... Rea...
Putin's win in Strasbourg
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A mixed court ruling on the dismemberment of an oil giant will go down well in Moscow...
Nearly 1500 attended the march to support Ahmet Şık & Nedim Şener in their 200th day of imprisonment…
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more photos and news here. Related posts:Journalists Ahmet Şık and Nedim Şener in prison for more than 100 days now. Journalists’ march today to protest their friends’ imprisonment… Ahmet Şık and Nedim Şener arrested. An unf...
Can Socialism exist in a free society?
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Why is there not a single functioning socialist society on the planet? Why is that? The aims of socialism are noble enough, so why is it that we have never seen a single functioning socialist society? The hard left will tell you that it is because o...
Free Dawit Isaak
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Last Sunday we commemorated the ten years since 9.11 2001. It was in the shadow of these events, when all eyes were on the burning towers in New York, that the Swedish-Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaak was arrested and imprisoned in Eritrea. Still ther...
New Book in French on Interim Measures
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A group of lawyers from the 'Young Brussels Bar' has published an edited collection of essays on interim measures at the European Court of Human Rights. The book is entitled 'Les mesures provisoires devant la Cour européenne des droits de l'homme. U...
the man on the Clapham omnibus says bring death from the sky
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Micah Zenko on the burgeoning US assassination programme. Here's the halfway point: However, in mid-2008, President Bush authorized a vast expansion in the scope and intensity of the use of drones in Pakistan. Since then, there have been an addit...
New Vice-President and Section President
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The judges of the European Court have elected a new vice-president, Josep Casadevall, the judge in respect of small Andorra. In addition, a new Section President was elected: Lech Garlicki, the judge in respect of Poland. Casadevall will serve until...
The European Court of Human Rights is Fit for Purpose.
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Ken McDonald’s opinion piece in the Times today is quite simply wrong. Far from measures being needed to reduce the reduce the scope of its jurisdiction, the ECHR is one of Europe’s success stories. McDonald’s main argument as t...
ECHR: the son of French President de Gaule could not insult Harki, since they are not defined, Boumaraf, 32820/08
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Mr. Philippe de Gaulle, while making a comment on his book about his father Charles de Gaulle, implied that 100 000 Harki were traitors – at least as Mr. Amar Boumaraf understood this. The Harki are usually understood as Muslim Algerians who served...
Wear my ACLU tee-shirt tomorrow, September 11, 2011!
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I will wear my ACLU shirt on the 10th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. This is a statement against the abuses that the 9-11 excuse have brought. The September 11th attacks mark not just a horrible attack, but the real onslaught against our freedom, l...
ACTA-avtalet allvarligt hot mot grundläggande rättigheter, enligt studie
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ACTA-bloggen skriver: Förra veckan publicerades två studier, som beställts av den gröna gruppen i EU-Parlamentet, angående ACTA-avtalets inverkan på tillgången till generiska läkemedel samt hur avtalet överensstämmer med rådande europeiska...
Draft Agreement on EU Accession to ECHR
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Over summer, a draft agreement on the accession of the EU to the ECHR - I reported on negotiations here - has been made public. This draft was negotiated between the Steering Committee for Human Rights of the Council of Europe (CDDH) and the European...
Response: Britain should be proud of the Human Rights Act – and protect it
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This important legislation embodies British values, not submission to EuropeNick Clegg has at last delivered an effective rebuttal of a series of intemperate attacks on the Human Rights Act made by the prime minister (Do not trash the rights act, 26...
63 journalists are currently imprisoned in Turkey…
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59 of them are in prison due to non-journalistic crimes, Ministry of Justice claims.Full list of the imprisoned journalists can be found here. That’s the tricky part. Some use being a journalist as a cover, and but most are accused of non-journ...
Political Psychology: Syrian Human-Rights Abuses
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According to the New York Times, “masked gunmen severely beat Syria’s best-known political cartoonist,” Ali Farzat, on August 25, 2011. The attack came days after he had published a cartoon showing Bashar Assad hitching a ride out of town with...
Tory MEP Roger Helmer calls for rioters to be “shot on sight”
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Conservative MEP Roger Helmer is not known for a measured, thoughtful approach to public policy, but with his response to the London riots he has really excelled himself. In a tweet this morning, the mustachioed climate change denier sent a message...
MEPs Pursue India on Human Rights Record
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MEPs have today discussed a resolution onIndiacalling on the Indian authorities to reconsider their decision to overturn the seven year moratorium on the death penalty. In a debate on the joint resolution in Strasbourg, MEPs centred on the case of Da...
“Journalists are no angels” - a timely reminder from the ECtHR
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“Finally, we should not ignore the dangers of journalistic abuse. In Poland, as in many other countries, journalists are not always angels.” These are the words of Judges Garlicki (Poland) and Vučinić (Montenegro) of the European Cou...
Why we are helping in North Korea
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You may have seen on the news today that the European Commission is giving food aid in North Korea. It was not an easy decision. In a country that is almost entirely sealed off from the outside world we wanted to answer two important questions: first...
EU Accession to the ECHR and the Election of Judges
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With the accession of the European Union to the ECHR on the horizon, negotiations are ongoing on several levels. One technical issue which needs to be worked out is how the EU wil be involved in the election of judges to the ECHR. Judges, under Artic...
Article 6 and Reasoned Verdicts
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The role of juries in criminal trials is probably one of the aspects which most facinates the general public. But how do jury decisions square with a defendant's wish to know on which grounds and considerations he or she has been found guilty? It is...
So where are the “Peace Protesters” in Orange Jumpsuits Now ?
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And were they so fond of comparing Gitmo to a concentration camp, when this kind of thing is perfectly normal in much of the Arab world?Hamza was picked up by security forces at a protest in Jiza, a village in the rebel province of Dar'a in Syria on...
