Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on 4 February signed a law on the ratification of Protocol 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, opening the way for European Court of Human Rights reforms. The lower house of the Russian parliament approved Protocol 14 on 15 January and the upper house on 27 January.
“I’ve signed this law today,” Medvedev said at a conference on 4 February which addressed the improvement of Russia’s judicial system. The president reminded that Protocol # 14 that contains changes to the Convention’s control mechanism was signed on behalf of Russia in Strasbourg in May 2006. “Then there were certain problems with the ratification of the document. As a result of the completed work, Russia ratified the protocol with the statements according to which the procedural norms on the review of complaints by the European court of human rights (ECHR) should be approved in the form of an international agreement subject to ratification, or though the state’s expressing its consent to its binding force by some other way. Russia has also made some other statements. Therefore the State Duma ratified the document on January 15, after I held consultations with it, while on January 27 it was approved by the Federation Council. Today, I’ve signed this law,” Medvedev said.
Protocol 14, designed to simplify and speed up the work of the ECHR, had previously been signed and ratified by all 47 Council of Europe member states except Russia. The protocol was introduced to help the court cope with the growing backlog of complaints, nearly one-third of them filed against Russia.
The Council of Europe welcomed Russia’s ratification. Council of Europe Secretary-General Torbjorn Jagland previously said the ratification would be important “for the whole of Europe,” strengthening the Court’s role in upholding human rights throughout Europe.
The State Duma declined to ratify the protocol in December 2006 on the grounds that some of its provisions were at odds with Russian laws.
Protocol 14, among other things, establishes a new mechanism to assist the enforcement of judgments by the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers.
The Committee can ask the Court for an interpretation of a judgment and can even bring a member state before the Court for non-compliance to a previous judgment against that particular state.
At the meeting, Medvedev said Russia should improve the work of domestic courts to reduce the vast amount of people turning to international courts. “Our task is to establish quality justice which helps our citizens in the country,” he said.
Meanwhile, Russia should stop harassing peaceful demonstrators, the European Parliament president Jerzy Buzek said on 1 February, condemning the arrest in Moscow of tens of human rights activists on 31 January.
Protesters gathered in the streets on 31 January to demonstrate against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Medvedev, but about 100 of them were detained briefly and then released because authorities had not authorized the rally. Oleg Orlov, head of the Memorial human rights Centre, an NGO that received the parliament’s Sakharov Prize for human rights in 2009, was among those arrested.
In a statement released in Brussels, Buzek expressed his “consternation” and urged “Russian authorities to cease this heavy- handed treatment of peaceful demonstrators.” He stressed that “it is the second time since the award of the 2009 Sakharov Prize in Strasbourg in December that one of our laureates has been arrested,” recalling 82-year-old Lyudmila Alexeyeva’s detention in December 31 “merely for defending the constitutional right to demonstrate freely and peacefully.”
Russian opposition groups recently started holding rallies on the 31st day of the month in a nod to the 31st article of the Russian constitution, which enshrines the right to peaceful assembly.