Our Message:
Prevent cases from being closed too early.
A case under supervision may be closed if the Committee of Ministers is satisfied with the measures taken for its implementation.
However, action reports submitted by governments may include misleading information or may not give the whole picture. Cases then risk premature closure, when supervision is ended even though the human rights problem identified in the judgment has not been fully resolved.
Civil society involvement is essential to stop this from happening.
Your involvement matters
In 2019, leading cases that had no submision from an NGO were three times more likely to be closed than leading cases which had benefitted from an NGO submission that year. With their submissions, NGOs, NHRIs and international bodies can alert the Committee of Ministers to shortcomings at the domestic level - and keep cases open until the problem has been properly resolved.
You can learn more about Rule 9 submissions and other ways to get involved in the implementation process in the EIN Handbook.
Case example
The armed conflict between the Turkish security forces and the PKK began in 1984 and worsened throughout the 1990s. This period was marked with grave human rights abuses.
The European Court of Human Rights found violations in hundreds of cases, notably for events involving “enforced disappearances”: where individuals had been killed, tortured and subjected to ill-treatment, before vanishing presumed dead.
These judgments were put under the supervision of the Committee of Ministers under the Aksoy v. Turkey group, involving over 300 cases. In order for these cases to be implemented, there needed to be proper investigations into the disappearances.
Stories of false progress
For many years very little was done. Most of the cases were obstructed due to failures to properly investigate, decisions of non-prosecution based on the resulting lack of evidence, or acquittals at the trial phase.
Nevertheless, in February 2019 the Turkish government reported to the Committee of Ministers that there had been significant progress. The following month, the Aksoy group of cases was closed.
Following the closure of the Aksoy group, the Turkish authorities took greater steps to shut down complaints about the lack of investigations. The Constitutional Court began to reject enforced disappearance cases. There seemed to be no way for the families of the victims to make the government look into what really happened.
Justice denied
The families of the disappeared continue to gather every Saturday to demand justice and accountability from the Turkish authorities.
Sadly the cases no longer benefit from monitoring by the Council of Europe.
A case closed prematurely gives the illusion that justice has been done. Yet the people involved know that this is not true. Early case closures damage faith in the Convention system and the rule of law in general.
Over to you
This is why NGO submissions are so important in the ECHR implementation process. NGOs, NHRIs and international bodies can alert the Council of Europe to what is really going on.
The European Implementation Network is here to help in that process.