Russia and the Council of Europe: A Troubled Membership and Its Legacy

On 24 February 2022, Russia commenced its military aggression against Ukraine. A year later we will discuss the consequences of this catastrophic event focusing on the Russian membership in the Council of Europe. Russia was a member of the Council of Europe (CoE), and a Contracting Party to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) for 26 years. On 16 March 2022, it became the first country to be expelled from the CoE, a consequence of which was its exit from the ECHR, six months later. The ramifications for the CoE and ECHR are hard to overestimate. In this workshop we will overview the difficult relations between Russia and the CoE.

Speakers:

Ed Bates

Dr Ed Bates is an Associate Professor in Law at the University of Leicester.

He has been a co-author of Harris, O’Boyle and Warbrick, The Law of the European Convention on Human Rights for its second, third, fourth and forthcoming fifth edition, (Oxford University Press, 2009, 2014, 2018 and 2023) and the author of E Bates, The Evolution of the European Convention on Human Rights (Oxford University Press, 2010). He is currently writing a monograph entitled, ‘The European Convention on Human Rights at 75: its post-2010 transformative era - decline, further evolution, and realistic future?’ to be published by Oxford University Press (forthcoming 2024), and with K Dzehtsiarou, A Forde, I Risini on ‘Russia, the Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights (1996-2022): A Troubled Membership and Its Legacy’ (forthcoming Bristol University Press, 2023).

Ed runs the blog UKStrasbourgspotlight (https://ukstrasbourgspotlight.wordpress.com/ ) He can also be found 0n twitter: @EdBatesECHR.

Kanstantsin Dzehtsiarou

Kanstantsin Dzehtsiarou is Professor in Human Rights Law and Associate Dean for Research of the School of Law and Social Justice. Kanstantsin is an author of three books and over a hundred of academic articles, review pieces and comments. He published in leading peer-reviewed journals such as Legal Studies, Human Rights Law Review, International and Comparative Law Review and many others. His research interests spread between interpretation of the European Convention of Human Rights, reform of the European Court of Human Rights, administration of international justice, comparative and constitutional law. Kanstantsin is a co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of the European Convention on Human Rights Law Review.

Andrew Forde

Dr Andrew Forde is a Visiting Fellow at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the University of Galway. His research focus is on the effectiveness of the European Convention on Human Rights in areas of conflict and contestation in Europe. Andrew worked for more than 10 years with the Council of Europe and the OSCE, much of which was spent dealing with human rights protection in conflict and post-conflict contexts. He served as Human Rights Advisor to the Commissioner for Human Rights, Deputy Head of Council of Europe Office in Kosovo, manager of the Confidence Building Measures programme and Political Advisor to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe. Previously he worked for the former Irish Human Rights Commission as well as with nongovernmental organisations in India and Latin America. He is the author of ‘European Human Rights Grey Zones: The Application of the European Convention on Human Rights in Contested Territories’ (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press, 2023).

Isabella Risini

Dr Isabella Risini is a senior research associate at Ruhr-University, Germany, and currently Managing Director of the Center for International Affairs, Faculty of Law, Ruhr-University, Bochum. Previously, she held a visiting professorship (W3) in public law at Augsburg University, Germany in the winter term 2021/22. Her research interests focus on the supervisory architecture of the European Convention on Human Rights. She published a monograph with Brill in 2018 (The Inter-State Application under the European Convention on Human Rights - Between Collective Enforcement of Human Rights and International Dispute Settlement). She serves as an expert to the Steering Committee for Human Rights (CDDH) within the Council of Europe with regard to a reform process on inter-State applications, a type of procedure that largely concerned Russia as a respondent. She also was invited as an expert to advise the Legal Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on the issue of interim measures in inter-State applications. She authored, together with Geir Ulfstein, the entry on inter-State applications in international human rights instruments in the Max Planck Encyclopedia of International Law.

Discussant:

Lauri Mälksoo

Lauri Mälksoo is Professor of International Law at the University of Tartu (Estonia). He is currently member of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe. His publication include a monograph "Russian Approaches to International Law" (OUP, 2015) and a book co-edited with W. Benedek, "Russia and the European Court of Human Rights: The Strasbourg Effect".

Host or Publisher Liverpool Law School