Guest-Post about the JURISTRAS Project

This post was written by Gabriel Swain, a Research Associate at the University of Kent’s School of Social Policy, Sociology, and Social Research.  I think the project’s reports will be of great interest to our readers.

Since its birth in the 1950s, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has functioned, through implementation of the rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights (the Convention), as the human rights body of the Council of Europe (CoE). Unique in the fact that individuals can bring complaints against states under international law, the ECHR has provided an avenue for victims of human rights abuse to seek compensation when none is available in domestic courts. In recent years, the European Union has embraced the Convention and has made membership in the EU contingent upon ratification of that document. The Convention allows a large margin of appreciation to states, giving them the freedom to decide how they protect the Convention rights and how they implement judgments finding violations against them. This has meant that people in each CoE member state experience rights protection and abuse in often quite different ways.

The JURISTRAS project began in 2006 with a grant from the EU Sixth Framework Programme. The purpose of the project has been to analyze the various relationships between the ECHR and human rights actors (both governmental and non) in CoE member states. The nine partners of the project represent nine CoE members (Austria, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Romania, Turkey and the United Kingdom) who can in turn be seen to represent at least part of the vast diversity of countries in that intergovernmental organization. The project coordinators at the Athens-based Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy structured the project to focus primarily on discrimination and the rights of minorities and other marginalized groups, and those themes have featured throughout virtually all of the reports produced thus far.

The various research reports, which have been spread over the course of three years, began with state of the art reports and case study reports, which provided the historical background for understanding the current relationships between each respective state and the Court. These reports provided insight into the complex ways that ECHR judgments affect, and are affected by, domestic actors, including governmental institutions, non-governmental human rights organizations, academics, lawyers and judges, the media, etc. Those reports were followed by a collection of comparative analyses, which focus on a variety of issues including gender rights, rights of ethnic minorities, rights of immigrants and asylum seekers, state-church relations, discrimination, and minority rights in general. State-level policy recommendations were then completed by each partner. Additionally, interviews with relevant individuals including government officials, prominent judges and lawyers, NGO executives, and leading academics were carried out to compliment the research and provide additional insight into the attitudes of key human rights players in each state.

Throughout the course of the research, different issues proved to be salient in each state. In some states discrimination against ethnic minorities has been identified as a pressing issue (Kurds in Turkey and Roma in Bulgaria, Romania and Greece). In others, cases involving gender and homosexual rights (United Kingdom) or freedom of expression (Austria) have made up a substantial amount of the case load, while still others experience immigration and asylum issues (France, Germany, United Kingdom), prisoner rights issues (Italy) or issues regarding restitution of property seized by the state (Bulgaria and Romania). As the reports display, the human rights issues across the CoE vary considerably, often as much as language and culture.

The project is now in its final stages and one book discussing the project’s findings is already set to be published, while a second book is awaiting acceptance by a publisher. The state of the art reports, the case studies, the policy recommendations and the comparative analyses are all available on the project’s website. Anyone interested in learning more about the project can also subscribe to receive email updates about project progress (follow link on website listed above).