scholarly journals Anonymous birth versus child's right to identity

Pravni zapisi ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 443-463
Author(s):  
Tamara Mladenović

The right to identity of the child, internationally recognized by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, is one of the most important in the corpus of child rights. Its structure is complex since it includes several narrower rights. Nevertheless, the situations where it comes to restriction of the right to identity are not negligible. One of them is the right to anonymous birth, the possibility acknowledged by legislators in a certain number of European countries. Conflicting interests between a mother and a child are inevitable consequence of the anonymous birth. The aim of this article is to compare the right to identity of a child and the mother's right to anonymous birth as insurmountable barrier in determining biological origin. Special attention is paid to the possibility of establishing an adequate balance between their interests, by comparing the importance that national legal system offers to each of them, with appropriate arguments, several different models of motherhood regulations are presented and can be found in European legislations. The analysis also includes the stances of international bodies, especially the European Court of Human Rights.

Author(s):  
Richard Siaciwena ◽  
Foster Lubinda

As a member of the United Nations, Zambia is committed to the observance of human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. This is evidenced, among others, by the fact that Zambia is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. Zambia has a permanent Human Rights Commission that includes a subcommittee on child rights whose focus is on child abuse and education. Zambia also has a National Child Policy and National Youth Policy whose main objectives are to holistically address problems affecting children and youth. This paper focuses on the progress and challenges currently facing Zambia and the role of open and distance learning in addressing those challenges.


2007 ◽  
Vol 79 (9) ◽  
pp. 311-333
Author(s):  
Maja Omeragić-Pantić ◽  
Biljana Vujičić ◽  
Bojan Tubić ◽  
Rodoljub Etinski

Constitution and procedural laws explicitly guarantee right to a trial in a reasonable time. The procedural laws have been changed and some new solutions, which have to enable a trial in a reasonable time, were adopted. The Decision on establishing of national strategy of judicature reform was adopted, in order to make the judicature more efficient. However, the inquiries show that there are still some significant disadvantages which affect the right to a trial in a reasonable time. Despite the new legislative solutions, adopted in order to accelerate the trials, some of these solutions are not completely sufficient or their implementation in practice is not entirely adequate. The Decision on establishing of national strategy of judicature reform sets up the right analysis of the current status, as well as "therapy for the healing" of judicature. However, it seems that current measures are not in accordance with this therapy. Technical modernization of the courts is very slow and personal capacities, on the level of the associates, is declining instead of getting stronger. The biggest disadvantage of the present legal system, regarding the right to a trial in a reasonable time is the absence of the efficient legal remedies with which the party could accelerate the judicial procedure, respectively with which it could give damages caused by the breach of this right. This paper shows how strict are the criteria of the European court of human rights in Strasbourg related to it and that the existing legal remedies in our legal system are not sufficient to meet these demands. The confirmation of this conclusion came from Strasbourg, when this paper was already written, in the judgment V.A.M. v. Serbia of March 13, 2007.


2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (6) ◽  
pp. 747-761
Author(s):  
Gianluca Montanari Vergallo ◽  
Natale Mario Di Luca

A venti anni dalla sua approvazione, la Convenzione di Oviedo necessita di un aggiornamento. Infatti, non affronta la questione del diritto dei bambini nati da fecondazione eterologa di conoscere l’identità dei donatori di gameti. La Corte europea dei diritti dell’uomo ha recentemente stabilito che: a) il diritto di conoscere le proprie origini biologiche è tutelato dall’art. 8 della Convenzione dei diritti dell’uomo; b) tale diritto deve essere bilanciato con quello della madre biologica di rimanere anonima (c.d. parto anonimo). Al fine di trovare tale bilanciamento, una possibile soluzione consiste nel richiedere ai giudici di convocare la madre per chiederle se intende revocare l’anonimato. Se la madre ribadisce la propria originaria intenzione di rimanere sconosciuta, il Tribunale non può consentire al figlio di conoscere la sua identità. Gli autori analizzano anche altre due questioni non prese in considerazione dalla Corte europea: a) l’equilibrio tra il diritto di conoscere le proprie origini e quello dei donator di gamete all’anonimato; b) se tale diritto dei bambini nati da fecondazione eterologa vincoli i genitori legali a rivelargli le modalità del concepimento. Tali problemi e l’importanza degli interessi in gioco inducono gli autori a sostenere che la scelta di usare il citato art. 8 come criterio di giudizio non è affatto ottimale. Appare preferibile affrontare queste questioni attraverso un aggiornamento della Convenzione di Oviedo o comunque con modalità tali da arrivare ad una regolamentazione che sia uniforme all’interno dell’Unione europea. ---------- Twenty years since it was opened for signature, the Oviedo Convention needs updating. It does not deal with the issue of the donor-conceived children’s right to know the identity of the gamete donors. The European Court of Human Rights has recently stated that: a) the right to know one’s biological background is protected by article 8 of the Convention on Human Rights; b) such a right must be balanced with the biological mother’s right to anonymity (anonymous birth). In order to find such balancing, a possible solution might be to require judges to summon mothers to ask them whether they would like to reverse their decision to be anonymous. If the mother reaffirms her intention to remain unknown, the court may not allow the child to learn of her identity and contact her. The authors also analyze two other issues not taken into account by the European Court: a) the balancing between the right to know one’s origins and the gamete donors’ right to anonymity; b) whether the donor-conceived children’s right to know would make it mandatory for legal parents to disclose conception procedures. These problems and the importance of the interests at stake induce the authors to argue that the choice to keep using the above mentioned article 8 as yardstick is far from ideal. It appears to be far preferable to deal with these issues while updating the Oviedo Convention or in such a way as to incentivize the enactment of legislation that would be uniform throughout the European Union.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 039
Author(s):  
Dewi Nurul Savitri

The Indonesian Supreme Court and the Indonesian Constitutional Court are experienced in examining international treaties, although the Indonesian constitution and national laws do not stipulate this matter explicitly. The Constitutional Council of France has the authority to examine judicial previews of bills concerning international treaties. Moreover, French judges can examine international treaties. There is also the European Court of Human Rights, which has an important role concerning the control of conventionality. This article aims to promote discussion about the examination of international treaty cases in Indonesia. It begins by considering the international scholarly literature on integrating international treaties and the rank of international treaties in the national legal system. Then, this article discusses the possibility of the Indonesian Constitutional Court to examine judicial preview of international treaty bills and judicial reviews concerning ratified international treaties.


2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 590-615
Author(s):  
Claire Fenton-Glynn

The right of the child to be heard in adoption proceedings flows directly from the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by almost every country in the world. In this paper, the interpretation of this principle across European jurisdictions will be analysed, both in terms of children who are old enough to make a determinative decision concerning their future, and those who are younger yet still possess the right to be heard. The wide variety of practices in Europe highlight the lack of progress in this field of law, which is not assisted by the conservative jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights.


2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Fenton-Glynn

The right of the child to be heard in adoption proceedings flows directly from the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by almost every country in the world. In this paper, the interpretation of this principle across European jurisdictions will be analysed, both in terms of children who are old enough to make a determinative decision concerning their future, and those who are younger yet still possess the right to be heard. The wide variety of practices in Europe highlight the lack of progress in this field of law, which is not assisted by the conservative jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights.


2021 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 479-493
Author(s):  
Dimitrije Đukić

Confidentiality of communication is a very important human right that gains in importance when the communication is conducted between a lawyer and a client. Namely, for a lawyer to be able to adequately represent their client, the client must be sure that the information they entrust to the lawyer will not reach third parties, i.e. that the communication will remain confidential. In this sense, protecting the confidentiality of communication between a lawyer and a client is very important not only for representing the client in each case, but also for the proper functioning of the legal system. This paper aims to establish which articles of the European Convention protect the right to a confidential communication between a lawyer and a client and how this communication is protected in practice by the European Court of Human Rights. The paper also examines whether it is possible to prescribe a measure by which such an important right as the right to privileged and confidential communication between a lawyer and a client could be limited and if so under what conditions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 139-149
Author(s):  
Kateryna Krakhmalova

This gloss summarizes and analyzes one of the recent key judgments of the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR) in the case concerning Ukraine, while considering the context of hybrid warfare and the special place case-law of the ECtHR has in the Ukrainian legal system. The judgement addresses both: the right to access to the courts and the issue of suspended social payments due to hostilities, the extent of obligations of the state defending itself against aggression towards its nationals and the delicate balance between security, human rights and humanitarian considerations; and as such has much deeper relevance and applicability than to Ukraine alone.


2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 31-41
Author(s):  
Anita Nagy

As for the right to a fair trial sanctioned by the convention, our most determining deficiencies arise regarding the compliance with a reasonable period of time. Despite of the relatively small number of the Hungarian infringements of the European Convention on Human Rights, the expectation of sufficiently efficient dispositions eliminating the prolongation of the judicial procedures applies for Hungary as well. In general, it can be concluded that the Hungarian legal system provides the basic human right to fair trial. This claim is supported by the low number of infringements in Hungary. In this study I sought to present the data related to the Hungarian cases proceeding at the European Court of Human Rights, as well as elementswarranting the emergence of the right to a fair trial assured by Article 6, together with the aspects during the monitoring of the cases of the prolongation of the judicial procedures respected by the Court of Strasbourg. Finally I aimed to delineate the aforesaid apropos of a representative and an exceptional case in respect of the practice of the Court as well.


Author(s):  
Susana Sanz-Caballero

This article analyses the interpretations made by two regional human rights courts regarding the best interests of the child. In cases of controversy, it is for the judges to decide how, or whether, the best interests of the child should be applied. Due to the dependence and vulnerability of children, judicial remedies are a critical form of redress when children’s rights are violated. This article analyses case law from two regional courts (the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (ICtHR) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)). The purpose of this analysis is twofold: first of all to see how the two courts interpret and apply the concept; and secondly, to ascertain whether there are similarities of interpretation or common grounds of understanding between the two courts, with particular regard to General Comment No. 14 (GC 14) of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child on the right of the child to have their best interests taken as a primary consideration.


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