UK urges changes to the European human rights convention

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UK urges changes to the European human rights convention

February 29, 2012 10:33:37 am

[JURIST] The UK has begun circulating a proposal for changes to the European Convention on Human Rights [text], which was leaked to the press on Tuesday. The proposal, entitled the Brighton Declaration [text, PDF], began circulating to member states last week. It is expected to be voted on in April when members states meet to discuss the future of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) [official website]. The proposal calls for a number of amendments [BBC report] to the convention with the most notable allowing the court to issue advisory opinions. Additionally, the would allow nations greater leeway in applying the court’s decisions on their citizens. This proposed amendment is directly in line with a statement [JURIST report] by the UK’s highest judge in October that found ECHR decisions are not binding. Due to the controversial nature of the amendments, unanimous approval from all 46 member states must be received before the proposal can go through. The government’s actions were not unexpected, though, because members of the government have promised for years to use the rotation of the court’s presidency as a platform for reform.

Earlier this month a UK think tank urged the country to withdraw [JURIST report] from the ECHR altogether in favor of a national high court. Tensions between the court and the country have been high for years due to the UK’s lack of agreement with some of the court’s rulings. In 2005 the court found that British prisoners should be given the right to vote [JURIST report]. The ECHR and the UK have also clashed over the issue of extradition of terror suspects. In February 2011 the UK government’s independent reviewer of terror laws published a report [JURIST report] saying that rulings from the ECHR made it difficult to remove foreign terror suspects from Britain. The ECHR refused to grant the government’s request that a terror suspect be required to show that it is more likely than not that he would be subject to ill-treatment. The ruling lowered the suspect’s burden of proving that he would be faced with ill-treatment upon returning to his home country. In July 2008, the ECHR stayed the extradition of four terrorism suspects [JURIST report] from the UK to the US, holding that potential punishment could violate Convention’s provisions on the prohibition of torture and inhumane or degrading treatment.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.

Former communist countries admitted for EU accession

On April 16, 2003, the 2003 Treaty of Accession was signed by 10 countries, admitting them for European Union (EU) ascension. After Malta and Cyprus, eight of the ten new EU nations (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) were former communist countries. The signing of the treaty in Athens marked the first time that former members of the Soviet Bloc joined the EU.

Learn more about EU expansion from the organization's website.