Die Renaissance der Staatenbeschwerde

Conflicts in Eastern Ukraine, on the Crimean Peninsula, and in the Balkans and the Caucasus – the Council of Europe system is in crisis, which has led to the renaissance of a long-forgotten instrument of European human rights protection: the interstate complaint procedure under art. 33 of the ECHR. It allows any contracting state as a ‘collective guarantor of the Convention’ (preamble) to refer any alleged breach of the ECHR to its court. After decades of indifference towards human rights violations in other European states, art. 33 of the ECHR became more commonly used after the turn of the millennium. However, it has primarily been misused as a dispute resolution mechanism, instead of its potential being exploited to solve systemic problems concerning the realisation of human rights. Therefore, this study calls for the renaissance of the interstate complaint procedure to be reframed in order for it to contribute to one of humankind’s goals: the effective enforcement of human rights around the globe.