Monica Macovei si persoanele cu dizabilitati

As dori sa comentez pe scurt pozitia Dnei Macovei strict cu privire la persoanele cu dizabilitati, din perspectiva drepturilor omului. Nu imi propun sa analizez contextul mai larg al politicilor sociale sau optiunilor dumneaei ideologice, au facut-o altii. Nu am gasit nimic relevant in programul Dlui Johannis. Ceilalti nu ma intereseaza, pentru ca oricum nu i-as vota din alte motive, desi presupun ca nici ei nu au nimic de spus. Am ales totusi sa ma concentrez pe Dna Macovei pentru ca dumneaei a ales sa abordeze acest subiect, pentru ca se revendica, prin experienta sa profesionala, de la ideologia drepturilor omului, si avand in vedere deschiderea ei europeana.

In programul dumneaei, Dna Macovei mentioneaza persoanele cu dizabilitati, declarand ca “Trebuie eliminate și sistemele de mită socială cu scop electoral, pentru că bătrânii, copiii, bolnavii și persoanele cu handicap sunt singurele categorii pe care statul trebuie să le protejeze.” Ieri (30 octombrie), Dna Macovei a afisat o declaratie filmata pe contul dumneaei de Facebook cu urmatorul mesaj: “Eu cred în solidaritate, dar nu cred în falsa asistență. Ce se întâmplă cu persoanele cu dizabilități ne privește pe toți. Unii s-au născut așa, alții, nu. Ceva în viața lor i-a adus aici: un accident, o boală. Pe toți ne privește ceea ce se întâmplă cu ei. Persoanele cu dizabilități nu sunt o povară pentru societate. Ei sunt egalii noștri, ei sunt frații noștri. Acești oameni trebuie să fie primii care să contribuie la redactarea și aplicarea legilor care îi privesc pe ei. Numai cine a trecut prin asta ne poate învăța cum să fim o societate mai bună și oameni mai buni.”

Persoanele cu dizabiliati din Romania se confrunta cu mai multe probleme grave. Multi sunt internati pe lunga durata in institutii sociale si spitale psihiatrice, unde traiesc o viata izolata si lipsita de speranta, in conditii mizere, fiind supusi deseori unor tratamente inumane si degradante. Este notoriu cazul Spitalului Poiana Mare unde acum zece ani au murit sute de pacienti din cauza conditiilor de viata precare si lipsei ingrijirilor medicale de baza. Acest scandal a rezultat intr-o condamnare de rasunet a Romaniei la CEDO intr-un caz in care l-am reprezentat pe reclamant Campeanu v Romania, si de care Dna Macovei stie cu siguranta. Dezvaluiri similare cu privire la abuzuri grave sunt la ordinea zilei. Cu toate acestea, Romania nu numai ca tolereaza abuzurile, dar refuza sa se angajeze in reforma sistemului prin dezinstitutionalizare. Acest proces presupune inchiderea institutiilor si mutarea persoanelor cu dizabilitati in comunitate. Conform studiilor stiintifice si experientei altor tari, dezinstitutionalizarea profita atat persoanelor cu dizabilitati cat si societatii in intregul ei.

Sistemul actual de beneficii sociale este invechit si mentine persoanele cu dizabilitati care traiesc in comunitate si familiile lor la limita saraciei, inchizandu-le intr-o relatie de dependenta fata de stat si condamnandu-le la inactivitate si izolare. Infrastructura si serviciile oferite publicului sunt inaccesibile. In cazul fericit in care persoanele cu dizabilitati ajung sa invete, o fac in scoli speciale unde standardele sunt catastrofale si abuzurile frecvente. Lipsa educatiei duce implicit la lipsa oportunitatilor in viata, la excluziune, marginalizare si singuratate. Atunci cand retelele de suport din comunitate se destrama (parintii mor, prietenii sunt epuizati), persoanele cu dizabilitati ajung inevitabil in institutii. Daca institutiile statului sunt ineficiente si retrograde, prejudecatile larg impartasite la nivelul populatiei si nepasarea pecetluiesc soarta acestor persoane.

In concluzie, avem cateva cuvinte cheie: dezinstitutionalizare, incluziune sociala, protectie eficienta impotriva abuzurilor, egalitate, demnitate. Acestea corespund in mare principiilor directoare ale Conventiei Natiunilor Unite a Drepturilor Persoanelor cu Dizabilitati, ratificata de Romania si de marea majoritatate a statelor membre a Uniunii Europene, cat si separat de Uniunea Europeana. Nu am auzit niciunul din aceste principii cheie in discursul Doamnei Macovei. Asta in ciuda faptului ca Dna Macovei se revendica de la ideologia drepturilor omului si a fost cu siguranta expusa, cel putin la Parlamentul European, acestui discurs. Tin sa precizez in acest sens ca doleantele persoanelor cu dizabilitati nu sunt un subiect de nisa – din punct de vedere numeric, persoanele cu dizabilitati si familiile lor sunt o minoritate semnificativa, de ordinul sutelor de mii; din punct de vedere moral si legal, un stat de drept este incompatibil cu impunitatea pentru tortura si rele tratamente practicate pe scara larga.

Situandu-le intre copii si batrani, Dna Macovei infantilizeaza persoanele cu dizabilitati pe care le priveste ca recipienti pasivi de beneficii sociale. Paradoxal, in cazul persoanelor cu dizabilitati Dna Macovei sustine implicit "falsa asistenta" pe care altfel o respinge ritos. Enuntul programatic mentionat mai sus este practic identic cu prevederea constitutionala conform careia “persoanele cu handicap se bucura de protectie speciala”, demonstrand in mod clar o logica asistentiala. Am scris mai demult despre dublul sens al terminologiei folosite la adresa persoanelor cu dizabilitati: in logica actuala “protectie speciala” inseamna in fapt segregare, marginalizare, discriminare, abuz. De fapt, persoanele cu dizabilitati nu au nevoie de “protectie” ci de “suport” pentru a-si implini potentialul si a deveni membri cu drepturi depline ai societatii. In aceeasi nota, Dna Macovei foloseste terminologia discreditata si stigmatizanta de "handicap”, eroare rectificata in mesajul video.

Cat despre mesajul video el se inspira in mod clar din modelul medical al dizabilitatii, care identifica “handicapul”  (deci persoana) drept cauza a problemelor intampinate de persoanelor cu dizabilitati. Acestui model Conventia ONU mai sus amintita ii opune modelul social, care identifica problema in barierele ridicate de societate si care impiedica participarea persoanelor cu dizabilitati, exemplul cel mai clar fiind lipsa accesibilitatii. Monica Macovei insista pe blestemul existential al handicapului, intr-un discurs lacrimogen si paternalist menit sa starneasca compasiunea. Ori persoanele cu dizabilitati nu au nevoie de compasiune, ci de respect si drepturi egale.

Singura parte aparent pozitiva este apelul Doamnei Macovei la implicarea persoanelor cu dizabilitati in elaborarea politicilor care le priveste. Dar, stati putin – in timp ce face asta, cui se adreseaza Dna Macovei? Se adreseaza cumva persoanelor cu dizabilitati, semnaland dorinta ei de a le include ca partener egal in discutie? Nu! Ni se adreseaza noua, voua, oamenilor “normali si maturi”, vorbind despre persoanele cu dizabilitati la persoana treia, cumva prezente in camera, dar invizibile. Asadar, pe langa faptul ca e, in cel mai bun caz, neinformata, Dna Macovei insulta persoanele cu dizabilitati. In acest sens, si avand in vedere cheia discursului prezentat mai sus, permiteti-mi sa ma indoiesc de sinceritatea Dnei Macovei.

Inca ceva despre ideea primita de-a gata si regurgitata de fanii Dnei Macovei fara nici un pic de reflectie, conform careia marsul anti-coruptie al candidatei lor preferate va profita implicit si automat si minoritatilor. Am precizat mai sus ca in ultimii 10-15 ani, sute, mii de oameni au murit in conditii suspecte sau au fost brutalizati in institutii. Cu ocazia sedintei publice in dosarul Campeanu anul trecut, CEDO a solicitat exemple de condamnari ale celor vinovati. In timp ce Guvernul nu a fost in masura sa prezente nici macar un singur exemplu, noi am fost in masura sa aducem numaroase exemple de NUP-uri, demonstrand practic ca personalul din spitale se bucura in mod oficial de impunitate. Cine este vinovat de aceasta stare de fapt? BINGO! Procurorii Dnei Macovei, idolizati si glorificati ca luptatori neinfricati impotriva coruptiei, "panaceu universal" etc etc. Dna Codruta Kovesi insasi, pupila Dnei Macovei, a confirmat un NUP in dosarul Poiana Mare care a scandalizat pe multi in Europa. Dna Macovei insasi cat a fost la Ministerul Justitiei, nu a facut nimic pentru a schimba ceva in bine. Acesta este doar un exemplu care ilustreaza de ce drive-ul anticoruptie in sine nu vindeca de prejudecati si nu poate fi (in toate cazurile) o solutie pentru problemele sociale cum sugereaza Dna Macovei 

Unii fani Macovei sugereaza cu obtuzitate ca abuzul si tortura nu sunt chestiuni urgente, si ca intai trebuie sa rezolvam cu coruptii. Permiteti-mi sa nu fiu de acord si sa nu mai am rabdare. Pentru mine cauza persoanelor cu dizabilitati este urgenta si fundamentala. Eu NU votez cu Dna Macovei pentru ca politicile ei in domeniul dizabilitatii ar perpetua dezastrul actual, dupa cum am aratat. 

European Court request to place man under guardianship and interim measures request

This is a brief post about a case pending before the European Court of Human Rights of a man diagnosed with schizophrenia, and who has been held for fourteen years in psychiatric hospitals apparently without a valid justification. Before I got involved in the case as the applicant's representative, the Court instructed the Romanian Government to place the applicant under guardianship as a measure aimed at ensuring the smooth running of proceedings
in the case before it. Except the problem in Romania is that guardianship completely deprives the person in question of their legal capacity amounting to "civil death", not restricted solely to litigation capacity. The Government complied and started guardianship proceedings. I recently filed an interim measures request trying to stop these proceedings, which however the Court summarily rejected as exceeding the scope of Rule 39. No judges have even seen my request. I find it particularly worrying that the Court is endorsing an institution (unreformed guardianship) that is de plano in breach of the CRPD. I will write more about this case and others, but for the time being I am publishing here my request for interim measures which has just been rejected. It is available HERE. For a word copy of the document please write to me directly: constantincojocariu@yahoo.com

Some thoughts on the significance of Campeanu v. Romania, before the Grand Chamber ruling on 17 July 2014

Valentin Campeanu, the applicant in the case Campeanu v. Romania, pending before the Grand Chamber of the European Court, was an intellectually disabled orphaned young man who grew up in an institution. When he turned 18 in 2003, Valentin was discharged from the home where he spent most of his childhood. The only option that the authorities envisaged was to transfer him to an adults’ institution. However, no institution was initially willing to accept him presumably because of stigma attached to his HIV positive status. The authorities eventually succeeded to secure his transfer to a social care home by fraudulently concealing his diagnosis. The transfer, which took place on 5 February 2004, was unsuccessful, as Valentin only spent a few days at the social care home, before he was taken to the Poiana Mare Psychiatric Hospital, infamous at the time for its grotesquely high patient mortality rates due to extremely substandard living conditions. Valentin was effectively abandoned in an unheated storage room without food and medical treatment, and died on 20 February 2004.  The official investigation followed the familiar pattern of all investigations in Romania into institutional abuse allegations before and since – it was very superficial and ended up with a finding of non-indictment. We filed an application with the European Court of Human Rights on Valentin’s behalf in 2009. In recognition of its importance, in 2012 jurisdiction over the case was relinquished to the Grand Chamber, which will finally deliver its judgment on 17 July 2014.

This case is only the second disability case that has been heard by the Grand Chamber of the European Court after Stanev v Bulgaria over the past twenty-odd years, in itself a marker of its significance. Like many other disability cases originating in Eastern Europe, it illustrates the multifaceted and severe failure by state institutions to protect and support people with disabilities, leading to a wide range of violations of the Convention. In this post, I will try to tease out briefly the significance of the case and of the ruling ahead of us, not an easy task considering the complexity of the issues involved.

Although it may sound tedious, a procedural issue takes centre stage in this case. However, in case of a win this may have the most far-reaching consequences going even beyond disability rights. Valentin’s mother abandoned him at birth and died in the meantime. He has no other known relatives and he had not been placed under guardianship. And here comes the snag – only close relatives/guardians have standing to file a complaint regarding the circumstances in which their loved ones died under Article 2 of the Convention on the right to life. Our complaint also included claims under other articles of the Convention, including the right to liberty and the prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment – for rights other than the right to life, the theory is that relatives may only claim violations of rights that are transferrable, like the right to property, but not of non-transferrable rights, like the right to liberty. Since Valentin, like many other people with disabilities languishing in institutions, had no relatives, we argued that the Court should allow NGOs working in the disability field to represent him – in this case the Centre for Legal Resources (CLR).

The issue is complicated, particularly as the Court’s jurisprudence is ridden with exceptions and inconsistencies, but in essence our line of argument was that the Court could not let the Government escape its responsibilities under the Convention for such serious violations under the pretext of a mere technicality. We asked during the hearing, and the Government could not answer – how else could Campeanu’s case reach the European Court if not through an NGO? It helped that the national courts recognised that the CLR had standing to represent Campeanu and that the European Court’s sister regional human rights tribunals use comparatively more generous admissibility requirements which would have permitted them to hear this case. Understandably, the Court was uneasy about our arguments fearing that it may open the floodgates of NGO-driven public interest litigation compounding its well-known caseload problem. Without going into details, in case of a positive ruling on admissibility, the Court will likely wish to define the circumstances of NGO standing very narrowly. In any event, such a ruling would be very beneficial, as it would afford NGOs additional space before the European Court to defend vulnerable individuals, not necessarily restricted to persons with disabilities.

On the substance, contrary to public perceptions this is not necessarily a case about living conditions in institutions, of which there had been others already. Valentin spent very little time at the social care home and then at the psychiatric hospital where he died, after being discharged from the institution where he grew up. This case is a rare glimpse into state practices relative to people with disabilities in their care and under their control, whereby the authorities are allowed to operate in a grey area outside the remit of any cognisable law or procedure, without any meaningful supervision and without the fear of any consequences, giving their disablist prejudice free rein and enabling them to dispose of people’s life and death at will. In that sense, this case presents troubling similitudes with the much more publicised practices of extraordinary rendition operated by the United States during the “war on terror”. The fact that Campeanu’s name ever reached public consciousness in itself is a miracle as it was completely fortuitous. It so happened that on the day when Valentin died, a CLR monitor visited Poiana Mare Hospital, witnessed his plight and upon her return took immediate action on his behalf. It is reasonable to infer that Valentin’s death is not an exceptional occurrence, and that similar abuses are the rule in institutions across Romania.  Documenting this reality is one of the main purposes of this case.

Although a long litany of horrendous abuses which took place in Romanian institutions have been documented and came to light over the past twenty years, little has changed. Not only did authorities refuse to engage in meaningful reform, but they didn’t even acknowledge the scale of abuse or the fact that something is fundamentally wrong in the social care system in Romania. In proceedings in this case, the authorities added injury to insult by busily denying that anything untoward happened at the Poiana Mare Hospital, or that Valentin died from anything other than natural death. The Government’s agent even presented and knowingly relied on forged documents seeking to displace overwhelming evidence of mistreatment. This attitude is reminiscent of that displayed by authorities involved in Campeanu’s care and the investigation into his death, indicating how little has changed in the past ten years, and how prevalent the problems are. A positive judgment may push the Government to acknowledge past and current abuses, an indispensible step on the path to real reform. 

The second objective of the case is to tease out the contents of State obligations towards a group of people whose claims have rarely been heard by the Court: people like Valentin who live in institutions for long periods of time, without any relatives or anybody else to represent their interests, with severely impaired mental capacity, completely dependant on the state for their day to day existence and long term future. Currently, the Court has only occasionally ruled that states should take action ex officio to safeguard the rights of members of this group, for example by requiring a system of automatic and periodic review of the lawfulness of involuntary psychiatric detention under Article 5.1(e). The main question in this context is related to their access to justice, the absence of which made such abuses as exemplified in this case possible to start with – we argued for example that states should have in place independent monitoring mechanisms to prevent torture akin to those required under OPCAT. Additionally, we are looking for a general acknowledgment from the Court that the warehousing and mistreatment of people with disabilities in institutions is, in this day and age, completely unacceptable, that people with disabilities should be involved in all decision-making that concerns them, that they should receive support to take decisions etc. This may sound unreasonably hopeful, particularly considering the Court’s past record on disability. Then again, this may be just the type of case occasioning such sweeping statements with the Grand Chamber clarifying in an authoritative manner that people with disabilities too are entitled to expect substantive protection under the Convention.

Finally, I would like to formally acknowledge the contribution of many, many people who helped document, reveal, litigate, and support in many ways during the past ten years the efforts to secure accountability for the high mortality rates at the Poiana Mare Hospital during two consecutive winters in 2002-2004, and of which Campeanu v. Romania is a part. This is the sort of long term, complex engagement that tests the viability of strategic litigation as a whole, possibly paralleled in Eastern Europe only by the campaigns around the Roma education case D.H. and Others v Czech Republic and Roma pogroms centred around Moldovan and Others v. Romania. The Centre for Legal Resources, including many people who came and went, have spearheaded this process at national level, and I have taken over when we filed the case to the European Court in 2007. I remember distinctly that very few people at the time – if any – gave these cases any chance of success considering the standing problem outlined above. To have reached the Grand Chamber is already an achievement, to go further would be amazing.

Further background information about this case is available HERE, HERE (in English) and HERE (in Romanian). Constantin Cojocariu is an independent human rights expert and lawyer specialised in advising transgender and disabled applicants in proceedings before the European Court of Human Right, and who acted as the applicant's counsel in Campeanu v. Romania. 

Hämäläinen v Finland - Preview of the judgment by Constantin Cojocariu

(CROSS-POSTED FROM THE ECHR SEXUAL ORIENTATION BLOG)

In advance of the Grand Chamber judgment in Hämäläinen v Finland next Wednesday, Constantin Cojocariu has written a guest post on the case. Constantin is the applicant's lawyer, and represented her in the Grand Chamber hearing last October. Many thanks to Constantin for this insightful and interesting post. 

The Court has recently announced it will deliver its judgment in the Hamalainen v Finland case on 16 July. The facts of this case are relatively straightforward. Heli Hamalainen, the applicant, is a trans woman who has been married for many years and who has a 12-year old child with her wife. She came out as transgender during marriage, and applied for legal gender recognition. The authorities in Finland rejected her request, as she and her wife were not willing to forgo their marriage, a precondition to legal gender recognition under national law. The applicant exhausted domestic remedies and lodged an application with the European Court of Human Rights, complaining about breaches of her rights under Article 8 (right to private and family life), Article 12 (right to marry) and Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination). On 13 November 2012, the Chamber rejected the complaint on all counts, based on reasoning that was reminiscent of that employed in the same-sex marriage case Schalk and Kopf v Austria. In that case, the Court made it clear that the Convention did not require states to open marriage to same-sex couples, and that that option remained within their margin of appreciation, at least for the time being. The Hamalainen judgment was even out of step with previous judgments in forced divorce cases (namely Parry v the United Kingdom), where the Court at least acknowledged the predicament of spouses in a transgender marriage faced with the choice between marriage and legal gender recognition. This article discusses some of the choices I have made, as the applicant’s main counsel, during proceedings before the Court, the different factors that may influence the eventual decision, as well as, briefly, the possible outcomes before the Grand Chamber.

I got involved in the case after the Chamber delivered its judgment, and asked that it be referred to the Grand Chamber, based on reasons discussed in a guest post published previously on this blog. In my request and subsequently during proceedings before the Grand Chamber, I tried very hard to distinguish the case from the broader question of same-sex marriage. Some commentators, including Paul Johnson, criticised my choice, stating that it would have been preferable to argue the case for same sex marriage more broadly. Indeed, equal marriage legislation also benefits transgender spouses, as it removes the underlying objection to legal gender recognition of the trans spouse. However, in my view, attempting to distance ourselves as much as possible from the contentious issue of same-sex marriage was the only reasonable chance we had to succeed.

The Court is obviously not ready to move forward on the issue, at least not until a more solid consensus builds among Council of Europe member states towards opening marriage to same-sex couples. And there are sufficient grounds for making this distinction – forced divorce legislation severs an existing marriage that is valid and intact, whereas discriminatory marriage legislation does not allow same-sex marriage to form in the first place. We emphasized that there were countries that had made this distinction (such as Germany and Switzerland), demonstrating that allowing transgender marriages to subsist did not necessarily require equalising marriage rights. Experience shows that the Court will only find a breach of the Convention on the narrowest of grounds, and that it usually refrains from deciding incidental issues that it was not called to decide in the first place. My choice was strategic, and is not dissimilar for example to that made by the applicants in X and Others v Austria, on second-parent adoption in a same-sex couple, who stressed that they were not seeking to compare their situation to that of married different sex couples (at §108). On the other hand, if I tried to draw attention from the elephant in the room - same-sex marriage - I did so in the knowledge that a positive outcome would benefit indirectly homosexual couples as well, by substantially undermining the rationale for preserving marriage as an institution reserved for different sex couples.   

The particular setup in Finland makes this case a slightly more difficult proposal. Transgender marriages are not ended by divorce upon the legal gender recognition of one of the spouses (in that sense, the system may be more accurately described as triggering the “forced dissolution of marriage” rather than “forced divorce”). Instead, marriages are automatically and comparatively painlessly converted into registered partnerships, upon the consent of the cisgender spouse. In addition, registered partnerships in Finland are more or less identical to marriage in terms of the rights and benefits conferred on the spouses as well as in relation to their children. The legal regime in place in Finland is therefore relatively benign, at least compared to other countries where alternatives to marriage are not available and/or divorce proceedings are particularly arduous and lengthy.

It therefore follows that I had to fall back on the personal and religious significance of marriage in general, and to the spouses in this case in particular. Although the applicant had not made a claim under Article 9, I tried to introduce religious considerations through the back door of Article 8 - married life comes with the scope of “family rights” and marriage is recognised to also have a religious dimension. This is a very strong argument, particularly pertinent to the applicant and her spouse, which the Court cannot easily discount as it mines the rich vein of its jurisprudence emphasizing the privileged status of marriage, justifying preferential legal treatment. Particularly in our day and age, the state has no business whatsoever interfering with valid marriages under any pretext, including the gender identity of the parties. In that sense, forced marriage legislation, as well as the reasoning of the Chamber in this case, very well reveal (as argued by Andrew Sharpe in Transgender Jurisprudence: Dysphoric Bodiesof Law) the “intrinsic homophobia of the law.”

Three additional brief observations. Perhaps it would have been preferable to include the applicant’s spouse, as well as their child, as victims in their own right from the very beginning of the proceedings before the Court, as their family rights are more obviously interfered with. That said, the Court is obligated in principle to also consider the consequences of the forced divorce scheme on third parties, including family members, during its proportionality examination under Article 8. Second, two processes are ongoing in Finland in parallel with proceedings in this case, which may result eventually in the repealing of forced marriage legislation. A legislative initiative is currently before the Finnish Parliament to equalise marriage rights, which however appears to have run into some trouble; and a committee was formed to look into the possibility of revising legal gender recognition legislation, including by abandoning the divorce requirement. To the extent that either of these processes had been concluded successfully before the Court delivered its judgment, that would have constituted a substantial consideration in the process of adjudicating the case in Strasbourg as well, potentially undermining the government’s insistence that there had been religiously and morally inspired objections in Finland. Finally, I spent a fair amount of time and space trying to unpack the normative contents of Article 12 on the right to marry. Without going into details, it seems to me that forced divorce legislation empties Article 12 of any significance, to the extent that Article 12 is interpreted as allowing the state to interfere with valid marriages to the point of triggering their dissolution. It will be interesting to see how the Court decides this issue.

To conclude, there are three possible outcomes in this case. The first is a win, which may vary in scope, to include various combinations of the claims made. This would be an amazing outcome, with substantial consequences for standards in the area of legal gender recognition more generally as well as marriage rights. The second is a qualified loss, but based on a more principled and sympathetic approach to the applicant’s situation and transgender rights in general. In this scenario, the Court may reject the application based on the lack of any material differences between marriage and registered partnerships in Finland.  While this would open the way for challenges against forced divorce legislation in countries without alternatives to marriage, it may spill over by encouraging states to maintain similar but segregated legal regimes for same-sex and different sex couples respectively. The third, and the least likely, outcome is the worst, with the Grand Chamber endorsing the Chamber decision, thus in effect denying the specificity of the issues raised in transgender cases.

Constantin Cojocariu is an independent human rights expert and lawyer specialised in advising transgender and disabled applicants in proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights.