‘Who’s it going to be next time?’: ECHR rethink is ‘moral retreat’, say rights experts | European court of human rights
TWar had been preparing for months. But this week, the issue came to a head in a series of meetings, phone calls and a stunning statement. Twenty-seven European countries called for a rethinking of human rights laws established after World War II, defining them as: An obstacle to the fight against immigration.
Amnesty International called this a “moral retreat”. Europe’s top human rights official said this approach risked creating a “hierarchy of people” in which some are deemed more deserving of protection than others.
The roots of the conflict date back to May when nine EU countries, including Denmark, Italy and Poland, were killed. published a letter He argued that the European human rights convention hindered their ability to exercise sovereignty over their own states and deport people who committed crimes. “We need to establish the right balance” The letter attracted attention. “What was once true may not be tomorrow’s answer.”
27 countries this week shared Although many countries, including France, Spain and Germany, refused to sign the letter, these complaints point to a divergence in the states’ perspective on the convention.
Speaking to the Guardian this week, Europe’s top human rights official criticized politicians’ “lazy language” full of assumptions and inaccuracies, which has led to countries mistakenly targeting human rights legislation.
Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, said one example of this was the “lazy correlation” between migration and crime. “This doesn’t fit reality,” he said.
Yet this distorted perception spread widely. “What is at issue is feeding the misconception in society that we are opening the door for criminals to run amok in our communities and cause untold harm,” he said. “No wonder people are afraid and demand that immigration be limited.”
He said that the culprits are politicians from different walks of life. “What happens is that middling politicians use this lazy language, but then it gets instrumentalized by those who actively promote disinformation.”
He pointed to the United Kingdom, where great emphasis is placed on cases where the human rights convention prevents the deportation of criminals. “And again here the numbers don’t match that,” O’Flaherty said. “The number is very small and completely manageable in any modern state with the rule of law. And very few of these cases reach the European court of human rights because there are all these checks and balances that come into play at the national level first.”
His opinion was supported by a report. published this week A study by the University of Oxford found that media coverage in the UK was “often dominated by false or misleading news” when it came to the impact of the convention on immigration control.
The report also emphasized the importance of the contract in many aspects. first signatory It was the United Kingdom when it was founded 75 years ago; It protects people in workplaces, hospitals and care homes, and protects victims of domestic violence and modern slavery.
The convention dates back to after World War II, when countries came together to establish the Council of Europe. dreaming about it as the protector of fundamental rights across the continent. These rights are enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, a document that has since been signed by 46 countries.
O’Flaherty said he no longer saw the need to modernize the convention and warned that politicians’ calls risked creating a “false expectation” among voters. “Is this really going to change the migration flow?” he asked. “Will this stop people crossing the Channel? Will this destroy the business model of migrant smugglers? I don’t think so.”
He also challenged the claim that the convention hindered the sovereignty of states. He said that individuals and countries can only apply to the European court after exhausting their options in domestic law, and that the European court of human rights consists of judges represents each member state. “This is not a bunch of foreign judges imposing something on us,” he said.
Writing in the Guardian this week, British prime minister Keir Starmer and his Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen argued that the human rights charter should be updated to stop the rise of the populist right.
O’Flaherty denied the connection. “For every inch given, there will be another inch demanded,” he said. “Where will it end? For example, the focus right now is largely on immigrants. But who will it be about next time? What happens if another small, vulnerable, weak, marginalized group catches the eye of some populist schemers?”
He said laying the groundwork for human rights would ultimately serve the interests of these populists by weakening the rule of law and risk creating a “hierarchy of people”, a concept he described as “very, very worrying” given that the convention has its roots in the horrors of the Second World War.
He said: “The Convention and the whole human rights system emerged from the most barbaric hierarchy of rights holders you can imagine, where not only were some people more valuable than others, but there were also some people who had no value at all because of their origins.
“A universal human rights system has been strategically constructed to ensure that we never fall into that nightmare scenario again,” O’Flaherty added. “We’re not there right now, of course we’re not. But we have to be very careful and mindful of the ultimate consequences of the paths we might take, even if unintentionally.”
