Double Olympic 800m champion Caster Semenya was discriminated against by rules forcing her to lower her testosterone levels in order to compete, the European Court of Human Rights has found. The 32-year-old South African was born with differences of sexual development (DSD) andis not allowed to compete in any track events without taking testosterone-reducing drugs. On Thursday the ECHR ruled in favour of Semenya in a case involving testosterone levels in female athletes. A three-time 800m world champion and 800m and 1500m Commonwealth champion, Semenya has been in a long-running dispute with governing body World Athletics since regulations requiring her to have hormone treatment were introduced by World Athletics in 2018. [...] An ECHR statement read: "The court found in particular that the applicant had not been afforded sufficient institutional and procedural safeguards in Switzerland to allow her to have her complaints examined effectively, especially since her complaints concerned substantiated and credible claims of discrimination as a result of her increased testosterone level caused by differences of sex development."

Activists are buying time for this to happen- never let anyone tell you that direct action doesn’t matter.

If left to the legal system alone, 8 people would have gone on that flight today.

(this is not to diminish in any way all the work Care4Calais have done in finding the people issued with notices and connecting them with legal support, they are an excellent org and you should support them if you can).

I know that separating sex and gender in the equality act is probably a good idea, but it is when the head is saying (basically) ‘gender is not as important as sex as a protected characteristic’

Still waiting for that sex-ed report as well.

Unsurprisingly, we're already seeing tory MPs speaking as though the ECHR intervention on the deportations this week (June 2022), are some kind of nefarious obstruction from 'outsiders'.

Pesky lawyers and meddling Europe

Except that the tory fave, Winston Churchill, was instrumental in the creation of the ECHR, and tory (and lawyer...) MP David Maxwell-Fyfe, was one of the key writers, and this is what he said about the need for an enforceable set of principles:

"We cannot let the matter rest at a declaration of moral principles and pious aspirations, excellent though the latter may be. There must be a binding convention, and we have given you a practical and workable method of bringing this about.”

Far be it from me to suddenly start quoting tories positively (because... Never Tory), but it's interesting to me that this same bunch of chancers have been using every opportunity to exploit the tendencies towards racist, jingoist nostalgia for the 'glorious imperialist past' of Britain and Churchill, trampling every attempt at progress and truth telling - insisting that teachers need to 'both sides' when teaching about the transatlantic slave trade etc. The baseline presumption of their nasty, duplicitous and unhinged little 'culture war' is that Britain's (and Europe - but mostly Britain... because hubris) gift to the world was democracy and the sense of 'fair play' that underpins any human rights law. (Which is of course BS of the highest order as anyone with sense and/or ties to former colonies would know)

But these fuckers don't even want to recognise the human rights that *their own heroes* drafted

Could Human Rights Law and the ECHR play a key role in tackling climate change?

In Duarte Agostinho v Portugal and 32 Other Member States, filed in November 2021, a group of Portuguese young people made claims about past and future harms caused by climate change, including harms related to forest fires in Portugal. The case reinforces the potential for the ECHR and the protection of human rights to play a key role in the future for holding countries accountable to carry out their climate obligations.

In this case, the applicants have challenged the legislative inaction of Portugal and 32 other states parties to the Paris Agreement. Their collective failure to take adequate measures to reduce global warming has contributed to significant loss of life as a result of climate change through heatwaves and wildfires, which is likely to contribute to further loss of life in the future (article 2) , unless imminent measures are put in place across all of them. The case conceptualises responsibility for violations of human rights as ‘shared’ amongst the member states. The case thereby challenges the traditional concept of jurisdiction by holding that the impact of the violations may be felt more strongly in some member states , other states also bear responsibility for the violation. Similarly, climate litigation challenges the limits of the existing positive obligations doctrine.

following this trend now in 2023, the governments of Switzerland and France have been accused of breaching the human rights of their citizens by not acting decisively enough on climate change, at a landmark legal hearing in Strasbourg. The European Court of Human Rights will hear cases against France and Switzerland over alleged failings to protect the environment made by a a group of Swiss women over the age of 64 who are supported by Greenpeace Switzerland. The applicants have alleged that heatwaves, caused due to climate change and the inaction of their countries, have impacted the health of senior citizens therefore impacting their right to life. The outcome of this case is highly anticipated and will determine the scope and potential of climate litigation going forward.

ECtHR’s case law under Articles 2 and 8 ECHR mean that the Convention already has the potential to capture the elements of this litigation that rest upon past harm. However, both causality and the prospective nature of climate litigation are key challenges, which will now have to be considered comprehensively by the Court going into the future.

Proposed legacy Bill may not be human rights compliant, warns commissioner - The Irish News

Proposed legacy Bill may not be human rights compliant, warns commissioner – The Irish News

https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2022/08/31/news/proposed_legacy_bill_may_not_be_human_rights_compliant_warns_commissioner-2814787/

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The Notion of the Jurisdiction in the Hands of the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations

Dr. Kutlay Telli

Kutlay Telli, Ph.D. 

Senior Lawyer| Consultant| Researcher|Certified Peer Reviewer

LLM Leicester University Faculty of Law, Leicester, UK

Visiting Scholar Fordham University Faculty of Law, New York, USA

After his graduation from the Faculty of Law in Ankara, he received his second master’s degree from the Leicester University Faculty of Law, UK in 2008. He delivered lectures in Fordham School of Law in the USA. He completed his dissertation research for an associate professor degree in New York. He speaks Turkish, French and English very fluently. 

He has extensive experience in different branches of public and private international law. He has been engaging in legal matters within the framework of national and international firms and institutions such as the Turkish Council of State and the United Nations for 15+ years.      

He wrote four books and numerous articles in journals with referees (mostly in English) dedicated to existing and emerging legal challenges and their effective solutions. Dr. Telli has a great capacity to produce legal documents, articles, reports and all related contents in particularly English and Turkish. He plays a considerable role in a number of leading international peer reviewed journals as referee. He also has extensive experience in negotiation techniques and diplomacy. Currently, Dr. Telli delivers legal and business consultation to foreign companies on their investment projects in Turkey. He is married with two children.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/14/european-court-humam-right-makes-11th-hour-intervention-in-rwanda-asylum-seeker-plan

Not entirely clear if this grounds the flight, but it seems like a VERY positive sign.

https://lnkd.in/df-GkYwr  'PUTIN SET OUT TO MAKE SURE THIS STORY WAS NEVER TOLD' As he plays the murdered spy in a new drama, the actor and Marina Litvinenko talk corruption, justice and hope. Alexander Litvinenko saw the horror coming, but nobody listened. Known to his family and friends as “Sasha”, the former Federal Security Service (FSB) agent, who was lethally poisoned in London in 2006, apparently by Russian spies, warned of the grave consequences of ignoring the threat posed by President Vladimir Putin.

EXTRACTS

' “In an article he wrote in 2006,” Litvinenko’s widow Marina tells me, “just a few days before he was fatally poisoned, Sasha wrote: ‘If you don’t stop this monster, he will start a war and millions of people will die.’ Now, finally, it is happening.” Sixteen years after Litvinenko’s final warning, the Russian president mounted an unjustified invasion of Ukraine.

Litvinenko, who had exposed Russian corruption before escaping from his homeland with Marina and their young son Anatoly in 2000, was equally prescient in his deathbed message, which directly addressed the president: “You may succeed in silencing one man, but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life. May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.”

This deathbed statement, read by a close friend on the pavement outside University College Hospital moments after the former Russian spy had passed away, is one of many chilling moments in Litvinenko, a new four-part drama that begins on Thursday ... 15 December 2022 ... on ITV’s streaming platform ITVX. Written by Lupin showrunner George Kay, the drama recounts not only the murder, but the subsequent, tireless campaign by his widow to find justice for him.

“The story feels important on a geopolitical scale,” says David Tennant, who stars as Litvinenko, playing him with a kind of rare intensity. “It reveals the terrible truth of what was attempted by this gangster who happens to have all this power. It also shows the wonderful victory – and I use that word advisedly – that exists within this. What Putin set out to do was to make sure this story was never told. So it feels that the most important thing we can do is to tell the story again and again and again because that way, Putin loses.” '

'Ultimately, the focus of Litvineko is Marina’s ceaseless campaign for justice for her murdered husband. Over the last 16 years, she has refused to give up, even though she has been consistently stone-walled by successive British governments that appear to value business interests above human rights.

“Unfortunately,” Smith sighs, “as much as there are bullies in Russia, there are also bullies in this country. The British Government felt unable at times to allow an inquiry to go ahead because they felt like there were bigger interests at play, let’s just say.”

It was the “relentless” determination of Marina and her legal team, he adds, and the “flawless” work from the Metropolitan Police that meant the British Government couldn’t avoid the case any longer. “It became inevitable that there had to be an inquiry and they could no longer ignore what was an absolutely obvious truth.”

In a revelation that will surprise no one, Marina says that over the past 16 years it has been extremely hard to get any sense out of British politicians. “All this time, I’ve tried to talk to politicians. I never expected to be so experienced working with the justice system and with politicians! It was Labour in the beginning, and then it was the Conservatives. I just started to realise that everybody has their own agenda.”

Then, “in 2010 and 11, people started to tell me: ‘Marina, they’re not sure you will have justice in the end because the political climate is different.’ I just couldn’t believe it. How is that possible?”

But she did finally persuade the UK Government to hold a public inquiry in 2016. It decided that the murder of Litvinenko was committed by Lugovoi and Kovtun, probably with Putin’s approval.'

' “I’ve talked to many politicians,” says Marina. “I have respect for some and a lot of critical opinions of others. But I believe they must watch this drama. What’s happening now in Ukraine must change political attitudes. They can’t any more just look for a balance between commercial interest and human lives. That approach needs to end because human lives and human rights are the values of democracy. This is a checkpoint for democracy in the world.”

If the inspiring Marina has one desire for Litvinenko, it would be that it pushes viewers to battle for their own causes. “I’ve heard many times how this story has helped people to fight for their own reasons.”

For all that, she concludes, “this is not only a political story, it’s not only a crime story, it’s a human story. It’s a story of love. It’s a story of hope.”

James Rampton 13 December 2022

ATTENTION ANYONE AND EVERYONE WHO CARES ABOUT THEIR RIGHTS AND THE ECHR

🚨ATTENTION!🚨 🚨ATTENTION!🚨 🚨ATTENTION!🚨 Once more the Tories (through Rishi and Truss) are threatening to leave the European Court of Human Rights because it blocks their disgusting and inhumane want to send victims of war and torture to Rwanda. Anyone and everyone who cares about their rights and ECHR and should be rightly scared about this. If you’re a UK resident, please sign and spread this petition around. We've got 30 hours left to get this signed. Our rights and the rights of the future generations after us depends on it. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/607712

https://x.com/i_iratus/status/1780668189778616689?s=12

“Next up, Ms Braverman, you advocate for the UK’s withdrawal from the ECHR as a reclamation of "sovereignty" (something I thought we had fully restored with Brexit, but hey ho). Yet, what you're really championing is a march not toward genuine sovereignty but toward a thinly veiled autocracy. True sovereignty flourishes not in isolation from the world but through robust engagement with international norms that reinforce our democratic values.”