scholarly journals Georgia v. Russia (II)

2021 ◽  
Vol 115 (2) ◽  
pp. 288-294
Author(s):  
Kanstantsin Dzehtsiarou

On January 21, 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or Court) issued its judgment in the interstate case of Georgia v. Russia (II). Georgia complained that Russia committed systemic human rights violations in the course of the 2008 war in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Both of these regions are de jure parts of Georgia, but they have not been effectively governed by central Georgian authorities since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. During the night of August 7–8, 2008, Georgian artillery attacked Tskhinvali (the administrative capital of South Ossetia). Russian forces entered South Ossetia and Abkhazia the next day. Russian and Georgian troops engaged in hostilities for five days, before agreeing a ceasefire on August 12, 2008. Since then, a significant military contingent of Russian troops has remained in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Georgian authorities complained of systemic violations of European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) Articles 2 (right to life), 3 (prohibition of torture), 5 (right to liberty), and 8 (right to privacy), ECHR Protocol 1 Articles 1 (right to private property) and 2 (right to education), and ECHR Protocol 4 Article 2 (Freedom of movement).

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-195
Author(s):  
Ramute Remezaite

The European human rights system has long been seen as one of the greatest European achievements, with its European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) as the world's leading human rights court. Current turbulent times, however, pose serious challenges to the European system, which is increasingly being contested by the deepening ‘implementation crisis’. The absolute obligation of member states of the Council of Europe (CoE) to abide by ECtHR judgments under Article 46 of the European Convention on Human Rights has been increasingly compromised by the selective approach of states, often resulting in minimal, dilatory, lengthy or even contested compliance with ECtHR judgments. As the implementation backlog has grown largely after the accession to the CoE of the newly emerged states, as aspiring democracies, in the late 1990s and early 2000s following the collapse of the Soviet Union, this article analyses the compliance behaviour of these states by looking at the South Caucasus states: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. The research findings suggest that partial compliance is a very likely form of compliance in the South Caucasus states as democratising states, and that some of the factors that explain such behaviour discussed in the article may be distinctive of states that joined the CoE as emerging democracies after the collapse of the Soviet Union. These states continue to display various vulnerabilities in the areas of human rights, the rule of law and democracy. This, in turn, has serious implications for the whole European human rights system and its ability to ensure that states’ commitments to the CoE are duly respected in the longer term.


2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 489-499
Author(s):  
Jochen A. Frowein

Only five years after the end of the Second World War terminating the complete disregard for human rights in one of the important European countries and in the occupied territories, the governments of European countries agreed on a European Bill of Rights and took the first steps toward collective enforcement of certain rights of the Universal Declaration, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948. Evidently the Convention was a response to the totalitarian ideologies prevailing in national socialism but also to the communist ideology and practice governing the Soviet Union and the European countries behind the iron wall. Was the Convention intended to be more than a response and clarification of the fundamental principles which were well recognized in the constitutional structure of the free European states? If this is the case it should have had an impact on the legal system of member states.How far that impact would go was certainly not foreseen in 1950 or 1953 when the Convention came into force. By hindsight we may say that the establishment of the European Commission of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights as judicial organs to enforce the Convention had something that is called “List der Vernunft” in German, a certain rule of reason, not fully understood by the drafters.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 9035-9038

The article analyzes the specifics of ensuring the protection of the right to education in case-law decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. The authors have found that there are problems in the current education systems both in Europe and Russia. These problems are solved in accordance with the case law created by the European Court of Human Rights making decisions to ensure the right to education. The authors have noted the main violations committed by governments or governmental bodies in its implementation. The authors have shown the correspondence of the norms of national education legislation of a number of European countries to the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights. In this regard, the authors have concluded that today, the right to education in European states is not always respected due to migration policy and in the future, relations in this area will deteriorate.


2021 ◽  
pp. 159-170
Author(s):  
Majida Lubura

A basic human right - the right to life, even today faces numerous questions when it comes to its scope. One of those questions is the issue of the right to abortion, which is the subject of numerous controversies among lawyers, philosophers, medical workers, theologists, as well as among citizens in the broadest sense. Debates that exist in various scientific disciplines indicate the complexity of these issues that needs to be legally regulated at the domestic and international level. For that reason, it is necessary to follow and study the judgments of international bodies that have been passed in connection with this issue. As the most developed system of Human Rights protection has been established within the European Convention on Human Rights, and at the same time the most relevant for our country, in this paper the author studies the current practice of the European Court of Human Rights related to the right to abortion. It is evident, from the case law presented in this paper that the Court had a very delicate and difficult task to balance between diametrically opposing rights and interests of various interested parties. The Court's judgments show a consensus only regarding the question of the existence of the right to abortion in cases where the right to life and health of women is endangered. Opponents of abortion claim that in this case, it is not the right to abortion, but the right to life of a woman and that only then an abortion is allowed and justified to be performed, as well as that it is a conclusion that can be deduced from the Court's case law. However, the author of this paper believes that even though the practice of the court is quite neutral, it still tends more towards granting the right to safe abortion.


Author(s):  
Scovazzi Tullio

The Bankovic case is one of few cases in which the European Court of Human Rights took a position that, without an acceptable explanation, restricts the application of rights granted by the European Convention on Human Rights. The application was submitted by individuals who put forward that in 1999 seventeen states parties violated art. 2 (right to life) of the Convention by bombing by aircraft the television and radio station in Belgrade. As a consequence of this NATO directed operation sixteen civilians were killed and another sixteen were seriously injured. The Court found that it had no jurisdiction to entertain the case, as at that time Yugoslavia was not a party to the Convention. The Court gave a too restrictive interpretation of the word ‘jurisdiction’ to basically conclude that the Convention applies only within the territory of states parties. The Bankovic decision has been contradicted by subsequent judgments.


2006 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakob Pichon

In the July 8, 2004 case of Vo v. France, the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”) dealt with the question of whether the embryo/fetus (“the fetus”) enjoys the protection of the right to life provided by Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“the Convention”). Below, a pregnant woman lost her fetus due to an error made by the attending doctor, and the Cour de Cassation, the French court of last instance, acquitted the doctor of involuntary homicide on the grounds that a fetus is not a person within the meaning of the French Criminal Code. Claiming a violation of her child's right to life within the meaning of the Convention, the woman appealed to the ECtHR. The ECtHR left open the question whether or not a fetus falls within the scope of Article 2; declaring that, even assuming Article 2 was applicable to a fetus, there had been no failure by France to comply with its obligations under Article 2, because the ECtHR deemed the institution of criminal proceedings unnecessary. Rather, it considered the possibility for the applicant to bring an action for damages as sufficient and therefore found that there had been no violation of the fetus's right to life.


2007 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitris Xenos

In the liberal tradition, there has always been scepticism about the state's involvement in the activities of industry. Instead, internal measures by way of self-regulation and collective action have been preferred. In recognition of the reality that exclusive reliance on such solutions has not prevented violations of human rights, to which a high constitutional importance is attached, other arrangements have to be provided. In the system of the European Convention of Human Rights (hereinafter the Convention), positive obligations are imposed engaging the state in the active protection of human rights. The need to protect human rights against the hazards of industry has been the main issue in the case of Öneryildiz v. Turkey, in which, for the first time in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter the Court), a claim under the right to life (Article 2 of the Convention) has successfully been asserted in the context of industry.


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 197-208
Author(s):  
Przemysław Siwior

Abstract The purpose of this article is to analyse the existing case-law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in environmental cases in order to determine whether the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) ensures protection in cases related to climate change and its adverse impacts. Due to the fact that to date the ECtHR has not yet ruled on the issue of climate change, the article analyses environmental cases addressed by the ECtHR based on article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) and article 2 (right to life) of the ECHR taking into account potential application of their conclusions to climate change.


Author(s):  
Anastasiia Sorokina ◽  
◽  
Vasyl Demchenko ◽  
Syuzanna Asiryan ◽  
◽  
...  

The article is devoted to the analysis of the role of the European Court of Human Rights as an instrument of protection of the rights of migrants. Based on the research of its practice the conclusion that the Court is an effective instrument of protection migrants' rights was done. The essential attention was paid to detection of the definition «a migrant». Migrant is a person who moves from one place, region or country to another one, and who has right to apply to the Court. Authors identified three kinds of migrants: official migrants, undocumented migrants and migrants who need help, and a typical list of violated rights of each of them. It was found that a group of official migrants mainly suffers from violations of such rights and freedoms as freedom of thought, conscience and religion (article 9), freedom of express (article 10), right to education (article 2 Protocol No.1) and prohibition of discrimination (article 14). Undocumented migrants are usually subjected to violations of right to liberty and security (article 5), prohibition of torture (article 3), prohibition of collective expulsion of aliens (article 4 Protocol No.4). Freedom of movement (article 2 Protocol No.4), right to liberty and security (article 5) are ones violated the most of migrants who need help. Considered and analyzed certain decisions of the ECtHR, where the Court points to violations of the above-mentioned rights. It was acknowledged that during the functioning of the Court, the practice in such cases has changed, and now is going to be described as stable and sustainable. Significant attention is devoted to the conditions of admissibility which an application to the Court must meet. Especially the authors pay attention on notion of victim as a person who has right to apply to the Court that gave an opportunity to detect the definition, the types of it and cases of granting the «victim» status based upon the practice of the Court


2007 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-256
Author(s):  
Cavid Abdullahzade

AbstractAs part of the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Azerbaijan Republic ended its protracted existence as one of the fifteen members of the Soviet Union and became an independent state. As a result, on 30 August 1991, she became a full subject of international law. Currently, Azerbaijan is a party to a number of international treaties, virtually all major human rights treaties registered with the UN Secretary-General, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, as well as a number of related Council of Europe human rights agreements.A tendency towards internationalization and a general 'opening' to international law can also be seen in the Azeri Constitution, which was adopted by public referendum on 12 November 1995. Like many other former Soviet Republics, Azerbaijan, in its 1995 Constitution, has rejected the traditional Soviet dualist approach of the implementation of international law in the domestic legal system and has established a monist system within the context of a relationship between national and international law. This article discusses these changes in the Azeri attitude towards international law, in particular the status of international treaties, with special reference to those problems stemming from the implementation of international treaties in the domestic legal system of Azerbaijan.


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