Yesterday the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights delivered its much-anticipated decision on jurisdiction and admissibility in the interstate case of Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia (nos 8019/16, 43800/14 and 28525/20 – decision; press release). The Court declared the applications admissible, in a clear win for the applicant governments. It also made numerous pronouncement of systemic importance for international human rights law, most of them moving the Court’s jurisprudence in a good, sensible direction. (But not all). The case resulted from a joinder of two applications filed against Russia by Ukraine, dealing with questions of human rights violations in Eastern Ukraine starting in 2014 and with instances of abduction of children, and an application filed by the Netherlands that deals with the 2014 downing of the MH17 airliner over Ukraine. For some background on the case and our prior coverage on EJIL: Talk!, including the relevant recent criminal judgment before Dutch courts on the MH17, see here, here and…
Targeted Killings
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EJIL: The Podcast! Episode 12 – “No Licence to Kill”
In this episode, Marko Milanovic, Philippa Webb and I discuss the legal issues that arise from targeted killings conducted by states outside their territory. We begin with a discussion of the recent blockbuster judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the case concerning Alexander Litvinenko (Carter v. Russia, no. 20914/07, 21 September 2021). In that…
The Law and Tech of Two Targeted Killings
The New York Times recently published two fascinating pieces on two separate instances of targeted killings. The first is on the tragic denouement of the 20 years of US presence in Afghanistan – a drone strike conducted on 29 August by the US military in Kabul, purportedly against terrorists planning a second deadly attack against…
European Court Finds Russia Assassinated Alexander Litvinenko
On Tuesday a Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights found Russia responsible for violating the right to life of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy poisoned with radioactive polonium in London in 2006 (Carter v. Russia, no. 20914/07, 21 September 2021). The Court found Article 2 ECHR to have been violated in both its substantive…
Extraterritorial Investigations in Hanan v. Germany; Extraterritorial Assassinations in New Interstate Claim Filed by Ukraine against Russia
In this post I will discuss two recent developments on the extraterritoriality of human rights front – the judgment of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Hanan v. Germany, no. 4871/16, on the compliance with Article 2 ECHR of the investigation by German authorities into the Kunduz incident in Afghanistan,…