By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

INTERLAKEN, Switzerland – The Council of Europe has announced plans to streamline procedures at the European Court of Human Rights. The reforms, designed to alleviate the court’s current backlog of 120,000 cases, were agreed upon by ministers from the Council of Europe’s forty seven member states at a meeting in Interlaken on Friday.

Embodied in Protocol 14, the reforms allow for one judge, rather than three, to decide on a case’s admissibility. Furthermore, cases similar to those previously brought before the court will be decided by a three-judge panel, rather than the original seven-member panel. Judges will be able to strike off the record those cases with similarities to those already decided, and reject those cases where the applicant has suffered no “significant disadvantage.” Protocol 14’s reforms will also allow the Committee of Ministers, charged with supervision of the enforcement of judgments, to work more effectively in ensuring that national governments enforce compliance with court decisions.

Judgments at the Court of Human Rights have taken an average of six years or more. Without reform, it is estimated that the current backlog in cases would remain on the docket until 2056.

More than 27,000 of the pending cases originate in Russia, and deal primarily with alleged abuses by Russian security forces in Chechnya involving extra-judicial killings, torture, disappearances, and dismal prison conditions. Russia had initially resisted the reforms, viewing the court as anti-Russian. However, Russia finally agreed to the reforms in January after the Council of Europe agreed to a provision stating that a Russian judge would participate in any decisions about Russia.

Initially created in 1959 as a court of last resort for Europeans who believed that their fundamental rights had been infringed in their home country, the European Court of Human Rights underwent reform on November 1, 1998.  The reform of the court established it as a full time entity, and allowed for the hiring of full-time judges. Most of cases in recent years have come from Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and Romania. It has delivered more than 10,000 judgments since 1998, and has handled a wide array of issues such as book banning in Turkey, crucifixes in Italian classrooms, the right of homosexuals to serve in the British Army, and the disappearances of Chechen rebels.

Karina Moskalenko, a Russian lawyer who runs a civil justice organization to aid Russians seeking to have their cases heard in Strasbourg, told Deutsche Welle that although it is not ideal having to go to France to get a fair hearing, the unreliability of the current justice system in Russia leaves no other option. She said:

“It would be much better if our citizens were protected by Russian courts or authorities, but as long as that is not the case, it’s good that people know who they can turn to.”

The first measures of Protocol 14 are scheduled for implementation in June of 2011, and a review of the reforms will be made in five years.

For more information, please see:

BBC – Mammoth backlog prompts European rights court reforms – 19 February, 2010

Swissinfo.ch – Ministers agree to reform European rights court – 19 February, 2010

Deutsch Welle – Strasbourg, the great white hope for human rights – 18 February 2010

VOA – European Court Facing Huge Backlog – 18 February 2010