EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ACTION / Alla Tymofeyeva (ed.)

The Council of Europe is made up of several institutions. The Committee of Ministers is the main decision-making body of the COE. It is composed of the Foreign Affairs Ministers of all member states. The Parliamentary Assembly is a deliberative body, composed of 313 members and 313 substitutes who are appointed by national assemblies. The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe is a consultative body with local and regional representatives. It is composed of a Chamber of Local Authorities and a Chamber of Regions. The Secretary General of the Council of Europe directs and coordinates the organization’s activities. The Secretary serves a five-year term. The member states of the Council of Europe, in the course of their human rights protection performance adopted more than two hundred treaties in the various fields of life. For example, the Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, the Convention on Offences relating to Cultural Property, the Convention against Trafficking in Human Organs, Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions, the Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism and many others. Some of the CoE conventions such as the ECHR envisage a controlling mechanism such the ECtHR. However, a majority are implemented on the domestic level without the creation of a special controlling body within the CoE. Given that the Council of Europe is the European organisation primarily established for the purpose of human rights protection, we are going to describe its treaties and bodies more precisely in this book. 3. COUNCIL OF EUROPE TREATIES AND BODIES The common framework of the organisation activities in the sphere of human rights may be summarised as follows: 1) the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms – the European Court of Human Rights. 2) the European Social Charter – the European Committee of Social Rights; 3) the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment – the Committee for the Prevention of Torture 4) the Commissioner for Human Rights. 5) the European Commission for Democracy through Law – better known as the Venice Commission. In the following segments of the book, a brief overview of each of these mechanisms will be provided. Taking into account a significant contribution to the area of human rights in Europe by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), a separate part of the paper will deal with a description of this body and its procedures. At this time, only a basic description of the ECHR will follow. 3.1 Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental freedoms The main human rights treaty of the Council of Europe is the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950). This convention, known simply as the European Convention on Human Rights (Convention/ECHR), was the CoE’s first legal treaty to protect human rights, as well as the first international human rights treaty with enforceable mechanisms. It was inspired by the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which was signed in Rome on November 4, 1950, and entered into force on September 3, 1953. Only member states of the CoE can become a party to the Convention. The Convention may be seen from a broader and wider perspective. In a very strict meaning the Convention is a document, which was adopted in 1950 and contains material rights in its Articles from Article 2 to Article 14. We say that there is the Convention and additional

EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN ACTION

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