Thema: Menschenrechte

Internationales Menschenrechtsrecht und supranationaler Rechtsschutz durch internationale Gerichte, Verträge und Überwachungsmechanismen. Im Gegensatz zu nationalen Grundrechten liegt der Fokus auf internationalen Rechtsinstrumenten, der Rechtsprechung des Europäischen Gerichtshofs für Menschenrechte und UN-Menschenrechtsmechanismen.

What is the Point of the UK’s Illegal Migration Bill?

The introduction of the Illegal Migration Bill to the UK Parliament appears to be the latest outburst of the Conservative government’s increasing hysteria with respect to the small boat crossings of the Channel in which Brexit-released fantasies of post-imperial sovereign power are acted out in the form of half-baked legislative proposals. The politically inconvenient fact that most of the 15% of asylum seekers who reach UK territory in this way are found to have legitimate asylum or protection claims seems to be a particular source of rage with a leaked Conservative Party email to party members under Suella Braverman’s name blaming “an activist blob of leftwing lawyers, civil servants and the Labour Party” for boat crossings, which at least suggests she knows her audience. This is “Build the Wall” for an island nation and, like Trump’s project, its primary value is as a fantasy object than a practical project.

10. März 2023

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Warming Up

In January 2023, Chile and Colombia submitted their joint request for an advisory opinion on the climate emergency and human rights, thereby paving the way for the first groundbreaking decision on the issue of climate change by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) and the first advisory opinion in this regard by a regional human rights monitoring body. The Court will have the unique opportunity to cover a broad variety of areas and questions that align under the umbrella term of climate change and human rights and therefore to deal with the issue in an integral manner.

10. März 2023

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Barring Legal Gender Reassignment in Bulgaria

The Bulgarian Supreme Court of Cassation (SCC) has recently rejected the possibility for legal gender reassignment of transgender people. The SCC followed the approach of the Constitutional Court in framing its reasoning alongside the lines of the traditional social values. In doing so, the interpretative decision arguably undermined its own goal of unifying the future case-law by avoiding the discussion on the right to equal treatment of transgender persons and their protection from discrimination on the ground of their sexuality.

2. März 2023

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Departing from Hostile Refugee Landscapes

In December 2022, the Swedish Migration Agency estimated that the Taliban’s conquest of Afghanistan has made the lives of Afghan women and girls so difficult that it counts as persecution based on gender. Against this background, the Migration Agency announced that all women and girls from Afghanistan are eligible to refugee status and a three-year residence permit in Sweden. These policies represent a major departure from the wide range of restrictive amendments that Denmark and Sweden, over the past decades, have introduced to their asylum laws with the aim of becoming less attractive target countries for asylum seekers.

23. Februar 2023

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Ausbürgerung als verschärfte Form politischer Verfolgung

In einem beispiellosen Schritt in der modernen Geschichte des Völkerrechts hat Nicaragua in den letzten zwei Wochen mehr als 300 Dissidenten ihre Staatsbürgerschaft aberkannt. Der Entzug der Staatsangehörigkeit verstößt zunächst gegen das Übereinkommen von 1961 zur Verringerung der Staatenlosigkeit. Abgesehen davon verstößt die Maßnahme gegen das Menschenrecht auf eine Staatsangehörigkeit nach Art. 20 der Amerikanischen Menschenrechtskonvention. Zu hoffen bleibt, dass diese Völkerrechtsverletzungen auch völkerstrafrechtliche Konsequenzen haben werden.

22. Februar 2023

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Israel’s New Citizenship Deprivation-Deportation Pipeline

Buried in the news on the Israeli Knesset’s judicial reform plans are two bills that substantially increase the government’s power to deprive citizenship and subsequently deport Palestinian citizens convicted of terrorism offences and their family members.  One already passed into law last Wednesday, while the one targeting their family members is still making its way through committees. In this blog post we survey and evaluate the rationales used to justify these newly assumed powers and set out why their current design is so insidious.

21. Februar 2023

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Statement by Canadian Law Professors and Jurists on the Proposed Legal Reforms in Israel

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The undersigned are Canadian law professors and jurists. We write out of concern that recent proposals to transform Israel’s legal system will weaken democratic governance, undermine the rule of law, jeopardize the independence of the judiciary, impair the protection of human rights, and diminish the international respect currently accorded to Israeli legal institutions. In the aftermath of the Holocaust and the other atrocities of the Second World War, the great project of legal reform throughout the world has been the establishment of systems of rights that protect human dignity. These systems exemplify the definitive legal repudiation of  those (and similar) ... continue reading

10. Februar 2023

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Es war einmal in Straßburg

Ein Märchenbuch für Kinder, in dem gleichgeschlechtliche Beziehungen dargestellt werden, (vorübergehend) aus dem Verkehr zu ziehen und es anschließend als „schädlich für Kinder unter 14 Jahre“ zu kennzeichnen, verstößt gegen das in Art. 10 EMRK gewährleistete Recht auf freie Meinungsäußerung. Dies hat die Große Kammer des Europäischen Gerichtshofs für Menschenrechte (EGMR) in ihrer richtungsweisenden Entscheidung Macatė v. Lithuania festgestellt. Der Gerichtshof betonte außerdem, dass die gleiche und gegenseitige Anerkennung von Personen unterschiedlicher sexueller Orientierungen der gesamten Konvention inhärent ist.

4. Februar 2023

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