Human Rights

NGOs Call for EU “International Justice” Envoy

December 05, 2018

In September, a group of nongovernmental organizations including Human Rights Watch published a letter calling on EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Federica Mogherini to establish an EU Special Representative to advance European policy across the globe on international humanitarian law and “international justice.”
CoE Body Places Denmark in Non-Compliance Procedure on Corruption

December 04, 2018

In September, the Council of Europe’s (CoE) anti-corruption body GRECO placed Denmark in its non-compliance procedure for failing to adopt a sufficient number of the body’s recommendations on mechanisms to prevent corruption in the country’s Parliament and judiciary.
EU Agency Reviews Eurosur Impacts on Fundamental Rights

December 04, 2018

Following a European Commission request to review the European Border Surveillance System (Eurosur), the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights produced a report containing a list of policy recommendations including a call for countries to bind themselves to explicit fundamental rights language in deals on border surveillance.
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.
Dutch Court Finds Rights Obligation to Tackle Global Warming

October 17, 2018

A Dutch appeals court has struck a blow for the global litigation strategy to impose human rights obligations on businesses and states to tackle climate change by finding that the European Convention on Human Rights requires the Dutch government to reduce carbon emissions by at least 25 percent by the year 2020.