TGEU, ILGA-Europe, and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, on behalf of nine fellow members of the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations (INCLO)*, express relief over the European Court of Human Rights’ ruling that Russia violated the right to private and family life of a trans man and his two foster children by terminating the foster care agreement on grounds of the man’s transition. However, we regret that the Court failed to examine and rule on an apparent discriminatory motive. 

Violation of the rights to private and family life

The European Court of Human Rights addressed issues under Article 8 regarding family life. The case involved the termination of custody and a foster care agreement of a trans man (and his husband) caring for two children, due to his diagnosis of “transsexualism” and change of gender identity. The Russian authorities primarily based their decision on the fact that under Russian law it is impossible for same-sex couples to be foster parents. Also, they cited societal traditions and mentality for the interference. The European Court however criticised that the overall family situation was not examined in full,  nor were the conclusions of investigating authorities considered.

The Court criticised the lack of an individualised expert examination or scientific study on the impact of gender identity changes on children’s psychological health and development. Additionally, the assessment was not balanced or reasonable regarding the competing interests involved. The Court also concluded that under Article 34 ECHR, the applicant had standing to represent the children’s interests because, at the time the application was filed, social services that were meant to be safeguarding the children’s interests were responsible for the wrongful actions in the first place. The Russian government denied this. 

A question of discrimination?

The applicant also alleged a violation of his right to non-discrimination, as protected by Article 14 ECHR. Unfortunately, the Court did not consider it necessary to explore this argument and concluded that the finding of a violation of Article 8 ECHR was sufficient. However,  Russian authorities terminated the applicant’s custody exclusively on account of the gender identity of the trans man and his decision to transition, as chamber member Judge Serghides rightly pointed out in a partly dissenting opinion to the judgement. Therefore, it is incomprehensible why the complaint under Article 14 ECHR (non-discrimination) combined with Article 8 ECHR was not fully investigated. This is a missed opportunity to develop jurisprudence on Article 14.  

TGEU, ILGA-Europe, and TLDP as well as the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, on behalf of 10 INCLO members, have respectively submitted comments in the case at the time. 

What this means for trans foster parents and their families

Russia left the Council of Europe on 16 September 2022. Therefore, the country is no longer bound by the European Convention on Human Rights. However, cases that were pending at that point are still heard by the European Court of Human Rights.

Technically, Russia is still bound to implement cases that are dated before Russia left the Council of Europe. However, in practice it is highly unlikely that trans people in Russia will benefit from the judgement as Russian authorities tend to ignore judgements from the ECtHR, even more so if they relate to LGBTI people. 

However, since the judgement is also relevant for the remaining member states, trans foster parents and their families in 46 States of Europe can refer to this judgement.

*The endorsing INCLO members are: American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA); Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS); Centro de Estudios de Derecho, Justicia y Sociedad (Dejusticia); Human Rights Law Network (HRLN); Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU); Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL); Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC); KontraS (Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence); Legal Resources Centre (LRC).

More info

• Savinovskikh v Russia judgement from 09 July 2024: https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/?i=001-234795 
• TGEU, ILGA-E and TLDP submitted joint comments in the case in 2021: https://tgeu.org/comments-on-russian-trans-foster-care-case/
• Case description on the ECtHR page: https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/?i=001-208220
• 10 INCLO member amicus curiae: https://inclo.net/savinovskikh-and-others-v-russia-third-party-intervention-2/

INCLO members condemn the Kenyan government’s intimidation and repression of protestors, legal defenders and activists who mobilized around the rejection of a new tax bill in Nairobi and other cities. We urge Kenyan authorities to comply with their human rights obligations. They must ensure the safety of civilians by immediately stopping the use of live ammunition and the abuse of less lethal weapons. They must also protect internet connectivity and ensure the people of Kenya can stay connected in this time of crisis.

On 18th of June 2024, protestors started gathering in Nairobi and other cities around calls to #RejectFinanceBill2024 and #OccupyParliament. The widespread protests were catalyzed by a proposed bill that would impact the socio-economic well-being of people in Kenya, especially those in already vulnerable situations. 

Illegal and disproportionate use of force

Since then, the government has illegally brought in military forces to suppress demonstrations, bypassing the Constitution and putting protesters in further danger by involving forces untrained for interventions with civilians. The disproportionate and unnecessary response to these protests has resulted in the arbitrary arrest of over 335 individuals, according to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR). The gravity of the situation is heightened by the throttling and shutdown of internet communications, which in addition to obstructing the organization of demonstrations, is preventing information from circulating about killed, wounded, abducted and arrested protesters. 

Among those arrested were members of human rights organizations including Amnesty International, Haki Afrika and Mageuzi Platform and paramedics attending wounded protesters. Equally concerning was the use of teargas by police against legal counsellors who were at the Central Police Station to provide support to those detained. Civil organizations have also called out the extrajudicial detentions of several youth leaders.

Rather than facilitate the right to protect, since the start of protests, law enforcement quickly set out to intimidate peaceful demonstrators, causing hundreds of injuries with their indiscriminate use of teargas, batons and water cannons. So far, they are responsible for 23 recorded deaths of protesters.

Obstruction of information

We also call on the Kenyan Government to address the internet connectivity issues immediately. Internet shutdowns and internet throttling are blunt instruments used by governments to exert control over the free flow of information during politically significant moments. They go hand in hand with state violence and repression. Because the internet is a recognised enabler of rights, internet disruptions have serious and far-reaching consequences for people’s fundamental rights to freedom of expression and opinion, access to information, freedom of peaceful assembly and association, rights to information and to organize. As such, it’s imperative that the Kenyan Government is transparent about the causes of the disruption and explain how it will fix the issues.

Misuse of crowd-control weapons

Despite growing awareness of the dangers of crowd-control weapons, their ongoing use in response to peaceful protests by law enforcement is deeply concerning. Research conducted by INCLO and PHR demonstrates that tear gas – the crowd control weapon most commonly used around the world and perceived to be among the least harmless –  can cause severe pain, suffocation, and long-term impacts such as chemical burns and vision loss. When the canisters are used as projectiles they become extraordinarily hazardous. Tear gas canisters are dense, metallic, large, often heated and can hit someone mid-explosion. Crowd-control weapons should only be used as an absolute last resort, after all other dialogue and de-escalation techniques have been exhausted. Law enforcement deployment of tear gas canisters has caused at least one death.

As such, we call upon the Kenyan authorities to:

• Halt all ongoing intimidation and repression of citizens taking part in their right to free expression and peaceful assembly;
• Release all arbitrarily detained demonstrators;
• Remove the military from the protests;
• Investigate any illegal actions committed by law enforcement that led to violations of human rights and/or serious injuries to demonstrators;
• Strive for dialogue with all of its citizens, remembering that peaceful protests are as much of a cornerstone of democratic society as elections; 
• Take immediate measures to ensure and protect internet connectivity throughout the country; investigate the causes of any internet disruptions thus far; and be transparent by publishing details of the causes and the actions taken to mitigate against the disruptions;
• Ensure accountability for all human rights violations, without which there is no hope of stopping an ongoing cycle of violence as was shown in our previous statement on the use of live ammunition used against demonstrators in July 2023. 

For more details, refer to the statement by KHRC,  the ACHPR, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and Police Reforms Working Group – Kenya.

SIGNATORIES
Agora (Russia)

Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales – CELS

Dejusticia (Colombia)

Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights – EIPR

Human Rights Law Center – HRLC (Australia)

Human Rights Law Network – HRLN (India)

Hungarian Civil Liberties Union  – HCLU

Irish Council for Civil Liberties – ICCL

Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence  – KontraS (Indonesia)

Legal Resources Centre – LRC (South Africa)

Unhealed Wounds - The Faces Behind the Injuries of Crowd-Control Weapons

combines photography, video and audio recordings to bring to light faces and stories of people injured by crowd-control weapons during protests. At the time of the events most of the eleven men and women highlighted in this project were either protesters, publicly expressing their grievances and demands in different parts of the world, or accidental passersby.

Their personal accounts are powerful testimonies of the harmful effects of these weapons.

“Amid the coughing and the tears that the gas produces, I began to feel the rubber bullets. Three projectiles hit my face, one of them in the eye and another in the temple. The one that hit me in the temple left me stunned and with a buzzing in my head, and the one that hit my eye left me blind in that eye,” said Daniel Sandoval, a teacher from Argentina who was injured while protesting against pension and social reform in Buenos Aires in December 2017.

Police institutions all around the world often use these dangerous weapons to stifle dissent. In the context of protests this practice escalates tensions, creates panic and causes long-lasting psychological traumas, serious injuries, disabilities and even deaths. Ultimately, the misuse of crowd-control weapons interferes with people’s right to freedom of expression and assembly and undermines respect for human rights.

The artistic approach to this project was inspired by the work of the Israeli photographer

Tali Mayer who also coordinated this project. “I found that there is a strong contradiction between the restrictions of these weapons on paper and their actual use on the streets by the police. Working on an international project made it clear to me that their misuse is in fact a common practice in many countries around the world. I hope that the Unhealed Wounds will help ignite a discussion in our societies on how we deal with the long-lasting tension between the law enforcement and people, with the primary demand to keep us safe,” Mayer said.

INCLO and its member organizations contributed closely in devising the concept and producing all the materials. The photos and videos were commissioned from local photographers and artists from Argentina, Colombia, Egypt, Hungary, India, Israel, Kenya, Russia, South Africa and the United States. With the exception of the Russian and Egyptian cases, all videos were taken at the location where the incidents happened.

Unhealed Wounds builds on the ground-breaking research conducted by INCLO in close collaboration with Physicians for Human Rights and published in a joint report titled

Lethal in Disguise.

INCLO advocates for the protection and promotion of the rights to protest and calls for stricter regulation of the use of crowd-control weapons at the national and international level.

Links

https://www.inclo.net/projects/unhealed-wounds/

https://www.inclo.net/issues/lethal-in-disguise/

https://www.inclo.net/issues/protest-rights-and-policing/

Contact

Lucila Santos -- INCLO’s Program Director -- lsantos@inclo.net

In a landmark win for seven INCLO members, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that the United Kingdom’s mass surveillance practices violate privacy and freedom of expression.

Led by Liberty, seven INCLO members joined a coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Strasbourg, France to challenge the legality of British and US intelligence agencies intercepting private communications en masse.

We initiated this case after Edward Snowden’s courageous 2013 revelations of the full extent our governments are willing to spy on us without reasonable suspicion.

Today, we celebrate the court’s historic findings that the UK’s system of communications interception was an unlawful breach of privacy. The UK’s regime for authorising mass interception was incapable of keeping their privacy “interference” to what is “necessary in a democratic society.”

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The International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations (INCLO) firmly believes that women and girls have the right to be informed of and to have access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods of fertility regulation of their choice. INCLO further believes that women and girls have the right of access to appropriate health care services to ensure safe pregnancy and childbirth. The ability of women and girls to decide whether and when to become a parent is a necessary precondition for the achievement of gender equality in all aspects of cultural, economic and political life. As such, the INCLO network supports the work of our members to make abortion services accessible to all women and girls worldwide.

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