European Court of Human Rights

A hearing will be held this Wednesday before the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Sejdic and Finci v. Bosnia and Herzegovina (application nos. 27996/06 and 34836/06) (press release here). A Venice Commission amicus brief is available here. A webcast of the hearing will be available here on Wednesday afternoon. The applicants are Bosnian nationals, who are respectively Roma and Jewish by their ethnicity. They complain because, despite possessing experience comparable to the highest elected officials, they are prevented by the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina from being candidates for the Presidency and the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly solely on the ground of their ethnic origins. They invoke, inter alia, Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) of the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention (right to free elections) and Article 1 of Protocol No. 12 to the Convention (general prohibition of discrimination). In brief, the Dayton settlement of the Bosnian conflict divided…