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10/11/2000
The European Convention on Human Rights was set up by the Council of Europe fifty years ago. Signed in Rome on 4 November 1950, the Convention protects the individual rights of 800 million people in 41 countries and gives anyone residing in a Council of Europe member state an ultimate remedy if these fundamental rights are violated: appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The European Convention on Human Rights was directly inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, and was signed by the post-war Western European governments in an attempt to prevent a recurrence of the atrocities committed in war-torn Europe in the earlier decades of the century. The Convention enshrines the right to life, to protection against inhuman treatment, to freedom and safety, to a fair trial, to respect for one's private and family life, one's home and one's correspondence, to freedom of expression (including freedom of the press), thought, conscience and religion and to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. Protocols have added additional rights, for example the abolition of the death penalty (Protocol 6). All States wishing to become members of the Council of Europe are obliged to ratify this convention and to secure these fundamental rights to every person under their jurisdiction. The effectiveness of the Convention is due not only to the wide scope of rights and freedoms it guarantees but also to its supervisory machinery, the European Court of Human Rights. The judgements of the Court are obligatory for all States party to the Convention. Any State that fails to enforce a Court judgement may be suspended or, as a last resort, expelled from the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. As well as hearing inter-State complaints, individuals can also bring cases directly to the Strasbourg Court. The kind of cases the Court has dealt with have ranged from the refusal of national authorities to register the forename parents have chosen for their child, to allegations of the most serious ill-treatment or torture at the hands of the police or security forces. They have covered issues such as: the status of unmarried mothers and children born outside marriage; criminal laws against homosexuality; secret surveillance of correspondence and telephone tapping; the length and fairness of court proceeding or the dissolution of political parties. Court judgements have prompted many changes in national legislation in many countries. The prohibition of corporal punishment in UK state schools, new rules on telephone tapping in France, new regulations on the detention of people with mental illnesses in the Netherlands and decriminalisation of homosexuality in Northern Ireland and Ireland, have all resulted from Court decisions. Today the Court is a full-time permanent institution, which comprises 41 judges - one for each member State. More details about both the European Court of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Right can be found at the Council of Europe website - www.coe.int
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