The European Convention on Human Rights is an international convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe. Drafted in 1950 by the then newly formed Council of Europe, the convention entered into force on 3 September 1953. All Council of Europe member states are party to the convention and new members are expected to ratify the convention at the earliest opportunity.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), also known as the Strasbourg Court, is an international court of the Council of Europe which interprets the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The court hears applications alleging that a contracting state has breached one or more of the human rights enumerated in the convention or its optional protocols to which a member state is a party. The court is based in Strasbourg, France.
Romania does not allow same-sex marriage or civil unions. Registered partnerships have been debated in the Parliament of Romania several times since 2008, though no bill on the matter has successfully passed. In May 2023, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Romania was violating the European Convention on Human Rights by not recognizing same-sex unions. The government appealed the decision to the Grand Chamber in August 2023, but this appeal was rejected on 25 September 2023. Romania is now legally obliged to provide legal recognition to same-sex couples, and may risk financial sanctions from the Council of Europe if it fails to change the law.
Mihnea Ioan Motoc is a Romanian diplomat who served as Minister of Defence of Romania between November 2015 and January 2017, in the Cioloș Cabinet. Before this appointment, he was the country's ambassador to the European Union between 2008 and 2015, and briefly the country's ambassador to the United Kingdom. He is currently the Principal Adviser in the European Commission's Inspire, Debate, Engage and Accelerate Action (IDEA) department.
Christopher John Robert Dugard is a South African professor of international law. His main academic specializations are in Roman-Dutch law, public international law, jurisprudence, human rights, criminal procedure and international criminal law. He has served on the International Law Commission, the primary UN institution for the development of international law, and has been active in reporting on human-rights violations by Israel in the Palestinian territories.
Tudor Panțîru is a Moldovan and Romanian judge, politician and diplomat, former President of the Constitutional Court of Moldova, and former international judge of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (2002–2021).
Boštjan M. Zupančič is a former Judge at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France (1998–2016) and also the President of the Third Chamber at this Court from November 2004 to January 2008.
Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights provides a right to respect for one's "private and family life, his home and his correspondence", subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society". The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is an international treaty to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms in Europe.
Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights is a provision of the European Convention which protects the right to a fair trial. In criminal law cases and cases to determine civil rights it protects the right to a public hearing before an independent and impartial tribunal within reasonable time, the presumption of innocence, right to silence and other minimum rights for those charged in a criminal case.
Renate Weber is a Romanian lawyer and human rights activist who, in November 2007, was elected as Member of the European Parliament. She is the first Romanian appointed as Chief of an EU Election Observation Mission. Between 2004–2005 she was Advisor on constitutional and legislative matters to then President of Romania, Traian Băsescu. She previously served as the Romanian Ombudsman as well from June 2019 until mid June 2021.
Angelika Helene Anna Nußberger is a German professor of law and scholar of Slavic studies, and was the judge in respect of Germany at the European Court of Human Rights from 1 January 2011 to 31 December 2019; from 2017 to 2019 she was the Court’s Vice-President. She had previously been Vice-Rector of the University of Cologne. Currently she is Director of the Institute of Eastern European Law and Comparative Law of the University of Cologne.
Emmanuelle Tourme-Jouannet is a professor of International law at the Sciences Po School of Law. She teaches and carries out research in International law, International dispute, Human rights and International humanitarian law as well as in History of law and Philosophy of law. Her career as a jurist and a philosopher has begun after having taken courses in law and philosophy respectively at Panthéon-Assas University and the Paris-Sorbonne University.
Michael Benedict Emmerson CBE KC is a British barrister, specialising in public international law, human rights and humanitarian law, and international criminal law. From 2011 to 2017, he was the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism. Emmerson is currently an Appeals Chamber Judge of the UN Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals sitting on the Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He has previously served as Special Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, and Special Adviser to the Appeals Chamber of the ECCC.
Ganna (Anna) Yuriyivna Yudkivska is a Ukrainian lawyer and judge. She was the judge of the European Court of Human Rights in respect of Ukraine in 2010-2022. She is a Member of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque is a Portuguese judge born in Beira, Mozambique and was the judge of the European Court of Human Rights in respect of Portugal from April 2011 to March 2020.
Flavia Lattanzi is an Italian lawyer specialized in international law who is an ad litem judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) since 2007 and professor at the Roma Tre University. Between 2003 and 2007, she served as an ad litem judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos is a Greek jurist born in Athens, Greece. He was a judge of the European Court of Human Rights in respect of Greece between 2011 and 2020.
Right to truth is the right, in the case of grave violations of human rights, for the victims and their families or societies to have access to the truth of what happened. The right to truth is closely related to, but distinct from, the state obligation to investigate and prosecute serious state violations of human rights. Right to truth is a form of victims' rights; it is especially relevant to transitional justice in dealing with past abuses of human rights. In 2006, Yasmin Naqvi concluded that the right to truth "stands somewhere on the threshold of a legal norm and a narrative device ... somewhere above a good argument and somewhere below a clear legal rule".
The Constitutional Bar, also known as the Romanian Constitutional Bar or the Bota Bar and which fictitiously called itself the National Association of Romanian Bars in order to obtain material benefits, also called UNBR Bota by then; was a parallel, illegal bar, bereft of juridical personhood, established by Pompiliu Bota in 2002 as an alternative to the "classic bars" of Romanian lawyers, reorganized after 1990 within UNBR, which is the genuine Romanian bar association.
The persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia refers to the Russian government's persecution of the Jehovah's Witnesses religious group. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Jehovah's Witnesses became legal after a long period of being banned, though have still faced widespread government interference in their activities. Jehovah's Witnesses were deported en masse to Siberia in 1951 under Stalin via Operation North.
