Human Rights

ECtHR: Exclusion of Woman in Hijab from Courtroom Violated Rights

December 03, 2018

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) recently held that Belgian authorities had violated the right to religious freedom of a woman excluded from entering a courtroom because she declined to remove her Islamic headscarf in line with court regulations.
ECtHR: British Bulk Surveillance Violated Rights

December 03, 2018

In a September ruling, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) decided that British intelligence services’ system of bulk interception of online communications, replaced by legislation with a new system, infringed the right to privacy under European human rights law because it did not contain sufficient safeguards against abuse.
ECtHR Finds Turkish Violation of Publisher’s Free Speech Right

November 30, 2018

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) recently ruled that Turkey had violated the right of a publisher to freedom of expression by prosecuting him for denigrating the Turkish state, finding that the book in question, about the disappearance of journalist, was not “gratuitously offensive” and did not incite to hatred or violence.
CoE Launches Online Course on Human Rights Education

November 30, 2018

The North-South Centre of the Council of Europe (CoE) has launched an online course, called “Global Education - The Human Rights Dimension,” to train educators on teaching the global human rights agenda to their students.
ECtHR: Anti-Police Blog Post Deserved Protection as Free Speech

November 29, 2018

The European Court of Human Rights recently held that Russia violated the right to freedom of expression of a man it had convicted of “incitement to hatred” for a blog post in which he insulted police officers and called for the extermination of “infidel cops.”
ECtHR Defines State Duty to Interpret Trial Proceedings

November 29, 2018

In August, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Slovenia violated the right to a fair trial of a native Lithuanian by providing him an interpretation of the proceedings of his robbery trial in Russian, which he did not understand.
ECJ Warns of Discrimination in Firing by Religious Hospital

September 11, 2018

Deutsche Welle reports that the Court of Justice of the EU (ECJ) has pointed to “hidden discrimination” in the firing of a doctor by a Catholic German hospital due to the hospital’s finding that the doctor had violated his faith by remarrying, setting up a possible conflict between EU and German laws on religious employers.
Study: OSCE Training Increased Ukrainian Judiciary’s Use of ECHR

September 04, 2018

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has cited analysis from the Institute of Applied Humanitarian Research indicating that Ukrainian judges who attended OSCE trainings on the application of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) were far more likely following the training to refer to the ECHR in their judgments.
EU Agency Seeks Removal of Free-Movement Restrictions

August 31, 2018

The EU Agency for Fundamental Rights has published a report calling on national governments in the EU to halt restrictions on employment, housing, and education access of EU migrants to facilitate Europeans’ free-movement rights and pushing countries to ease EU migrants’ access to the polls by “removing administrative barriers such as proof of residence.”
CoE Body Criticizes Switzerland over Political Funding

August 15, 2018

In a recent report, the Council of Europe’s (CoE) Group of States against Corruption has expressed its “regret” that the Swiss federal government has declined to implement the CoE body’s recommendations on increasing the transparency of party and election campaign funding in the country.