On 4 November 1950, 75 years ago today, the European Convention on Human Rights was signed into law by the United Kingdom and 11 other member states of the Council of Europe, at a special ceremony in Rome. The ECHR was drafted in the aftermath of World War Two, as states resolved to never again repeat those atrocities, and set up a regional human rights court to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms for all individuals in Europe.
With the rise of far right populism in the UK, however, the ECHR has become a politically charged issue. Far right actors misconstrue and undermine the rights and freedoms underpinning the Convention, in a way its authors could not have anticipated.
In a joint letter, Liberty and nearly 300 organisations argue politicians are using the ECHR as a “scapegoat” and promoting “irresponsible rhetoric targeting migrant and minoritised communities, which has devastating real-world consequences for people who are often already made vulnerable by wider social and economic marginalisation and stigmatisation.”
Several women’s rights organisations signed the letter, including the End Violence Against Women Coalition, Women for Refugee Women, Refuge, Karma Nirvana, Women’s Budget Group, SafeLives and Rights of Women.
Andrea Simon, End Violence Against Women Coalition executive director, said:
“We cannot end violence against women and girls without defending the human rights protections we have long fought for. The Human Rights Act and ECHR are crucial tools in our fight to end violence against women and girls, providing victims and survivors with access to support, safety and justice when they are failed by the state.
The ECHR means police have a duty to investigate VAWG, and that frontline support services can demand that local authorities protect women and girls at immediate risk, by providing alternative housing for survivors of domestic abuse. Violence against women and girls is entirely preventable, and it relies on a world with human rights for all.”
How does the European Convention on Human Rights protect women and girls from gender-based violence?
There are four key rights in the European Convention – and the Human Rights Act (1998), which incorporates the European Convention into domestic law in the UK – that particularly protect women and girls from gender-based violence.
Article 2: the right to life
According to the latest Femicide Census, more than two women are killed by men each week in the UK. The most common perpetrator is a partner or ex-partner. Article 2 is an absolute right to life, under the Human Rights Act and the European Convention. In 2009, the European Court of Human Rights found in Opuz v Turkey that domestic abuse had violated a woman’s right to life (article 2), right to be free from torture or inhuman and degrading treatment (article 3) and right to not be discriminated against on the basis of biological sex (article 14).
Article 3: the right to be free from torture or inhuman and degrading treatment
In 2018, the UK Supreme Court ruled that the police have a legal duty, under article 3 of the Human Rights Act, to effectively investigate allegations of rape and serious sexual assault. This was the outcome of a landmark case, where two women who were victims of John Worboys, the ‘black cab rapist’, brought a claim against the Metropolitan Police for failing to properly investigate their reports of sexual violence.
The Supreme Court found that “egregious and significant” errors in a police investigation, following a report of sexual violence, could give rise to a breach of article 3 of the Human Rights Act.
Article 8: the right to respect for private and family life, home and correspondence
In 2008, the European Court found in the case of Bevacqua and S. v Bulgaria that public authorities in Bulgaria had violated the article 8 right to a private and family life of a mother and young child fleeing domestic abuse, by not promptly adopting interim custody measures and protecting them from the threat posed by the mother’s ex-partner.
The Court stressed in particular that considering the dispute to be a “private matter” was incompatible with the authorities’ obligation to protect the family life of the mother and child.
Article 14: the right to be free from discrimination
In 2013, the European Court found in Eremia and Others v. the Republic of Moldova that the Moldovan authorities’ failure to protect a woman and her two daughters from her husband and their father, who was also a police officer, amounted to discrimination on the basis of biological sex.
The Court found that the authorities’ actions had not been a simple failure or delay in dealing with their allegations of violence, but had amounted to repeatedly condoning such violence and reflected a discriminatory attitude towards the first applicant as a woman. The Court also noted evidence from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women, that Moldovan authorities did not fully appreciate the seriousness and extent of domestic violence in Moldova, and its discriminatory effect on women.
Living under Patriarchy 