"ECHR" most commonly refers to the European Convention on Human Rights, formally the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, opened for signature in Rome on 4 November 1950 and entering into force on 3 September 1953. It was drafted under the auspices of the Council of Europe, the regional organisation founded in 1949 in the aftermath of the Second World War, and was heavily influenced by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The acronym is also used for the European Court of Human Rights (more precisely abbreviated ECtHR), the Strasbourg-based judicial body that interprets and applies the Convention. Atlas readers should be careful to distinguish the two: the Convention is the treaty, the Court is the institution that enforces it.
The Convention protects rights including the right to life (Article 2), the prohibition of torture (Article 3), the right to a fair trial (Article 6), the right to respect for private and family life (Article 8), and freedom of expression (Article 10). Additional rights have been added by Protocols — for example, Protocol 1 (property, education, free elections), Protocol 6 (abolition of the death penalty in peacetime), and Protocol 13 (abolition in all circumstances).
All 46 member states of the Council of Europe are parties to the Convention. Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe in March 2022 following its invasion of Ukraine and ceased to be a party to the Convention on 16 September 2022. The United Kingdom incorporated Convention rights into domestic law through the Human Rights Act 1998.
Individuals, NGOs and groups may bring applications directly to the Court after exhausting domestic remedies. Judgments are binding on respondent states, and their execution is supervised by the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers. Landmark cases include Tyrer v United Kingdom (1978) on degrading punishment and Hirst v United Kingdom (No. 2) (2005) on prisoner voting rights.
Example
In 2023 the European Court of Human Rights ruled in *Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz v Switzerland* that Switzerland had violated Article 8 of the ECHR through insufficient climate action — the first such climate ruling by the Court (judgment delivered April 2024).
Frequently asked questions
No. The ECHR is a treaty of the Council of Europe, a separate body of 46 member states. The EU is not itself a party to the Convention, though Article 6 of the Treaty on European Union commits it to accede, and EU law independently recognises ECHR rights as general principles.
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