Source: https://strasbourgobservers.com/category/by-topic/childrens-rights/page/2/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 13:06:21+00:00

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This guest post was written by Professor Ursula Kilkelly. Professor Kilkelly is Director of the Child Law Clinic at the Faculty of Law of University College Cork, Ireland (see more info below the post, at *).
On 28 January 2014, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights handed down its judgment in the case of Louise O’Keeffe and Ireland. The judgment brought to a conclusion a 15 year-long legal battle whereby the applicant – who was abused by her teacher when attending primary school in Ireland – sought vindication of her rights against the state. It also resulted in a ground breaking judgment of the European Court which established beyond doubt that the state has a positive duty to take steps to protect children from abuse under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Family Reunification in Berisha v. Switzerland: The Child’s Best Interests, Really?
This week, in a divided ruling, the Court rejected the case of Berisha v. Switzerland. By four votes to three, the Court held that the refusal of residence permits to the applicants’ three children – who were born in Kosovo and entered Switzerland illegally – did not violate the parents’ right to respect for family life. In this post, I discuss the Court’s analysis of the best interests of the children involved in the case and show how the analysis fails to live up to this principle.
Less stringent measures and migration detention: overruling Saadi v. UK?
The recent cases of Yoh-Ekale Mwanje v. Belgium and Popov v. France illustrate how a ‘less stringent measures test’ is entering the Court’s reasoning under Art. 5 § 1 ECHR in migration detention cases. The Court appears to be slowly moving away from its deferential approach in Saadi v. The United Kingdom. This might result in the overruling of Saadi by the Grand Chamber in the near future.
In a school ALL pupils should be king! An example of segregation in a Belgian school.
﻿From a minority perspective, this week was not a good week in Belgium. On Wednesday, a television broadcast proved that employment agencies cooperate actively with employers who don’t want to hire people with a foreign background (in Belgium the so-called “allochtonen”). An undercover journalist who posed as an employer searching for new employees, asked the agencies not to select people from a foreign background. Out of the 8 agencies, 6 admitted not having any problem with this question, even if it is unlawful. One of them literally said: “the client is king”!
Church Sexual Abuse in Belgium: Respecting Privacy or Punishing Those Responsible?
In a previous post, Alexandra wrote about sexual abuse by members of the Church and possibly relevant case-law of the European Court of Human Rights. I will follow up on that post in this one.
The past week, the Belgian authorities have upped the ante in the fight against sexual abuse by members of the Catholic Church. An investigative judge ordered house searches in several buildings, including a cathedral, belonging to the Church. During the searches, the police looked for evidence of knowledge of – and thus, attempts to hide – the sexual abuse by the Church. They also seized the 475 personal files of victims that had reported their abuse to the so-called Commission Adriaenssens. The Commission had been set up by the Church itself as an organ of independent experts that would examine the sexual abuse by members of the Church in Belgium. Following the search and the confiscation of the files, the Commission decided to disband since it felt it could no longer fulfil its task. The President of the Commission expressed outrage over what he called a violation of the victims’ privacy. Members of the Church, going as high up as the Vatican itself, expressed similar outrage over the searches. The Vatican described these as worse than the practices during the Communist regimes. But also the victims whose files had been confiscated did not go unheard. One victim filed a complaint with the investigative authorities, claiming to be disadvantaged by their actions, in order to get insight into the files and closer involvement in the procedures. Other victims have joined together to, now that the Commission Adriaenssens has disbanded, demand a Parliamentary investigation into the crimes of sexual abuse by Church members.
The various reactions reveal that the house searches, and especially the seizure of the personal files of the victims that had stepped forward, pose difficult issues. I would divide the complaints into two different categories. The complaints of the Church and the Vatican about the manner in which the searches were conducted constitute the first category. The complaints of the Commission and the victims about the violation of the victims’ privacy constitute the second. I will discuss these in turn.
Mustafa and Armağan Akin v. Turkey: Not above children’s heads!

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