Late Stage Ireland

ECHR: Conflicts of Interest Between Judges and NGOs.

Last year, the European Centre For Law and Justice published the result of their six month investigation into the background of the judges at the European Court of Human Rights and their relationship with NGOs.

Here is a summary of their findings:

Seven NGOs are both active at the ECHR and have former staff who serve as judges at the ECHR.

At least 22 of the 100 judges who have served at the ECHR since 2009 are former staff or leaders of these seven NGOs.

12 of the 22 judges were former staff of George Soros' Open Society Foundation and its various branches in particular the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI).

18 of the 22 judges were found to have served on cases initiated or supported by the Open Society Network.

All of the remaining six NGOs are funded by George Soros' Open Society Foundation.

These NGOs are listed in alphabetical order as:

• A.I.R.E. Center (Advice on Individual Rights in Europe).
• Amnesty International.
• The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ).
• The Helsinki committees and foundations network.
• Human Rights Watch (HRW).
• Interights (International Center for the Judicial Protection of Human Rights).

These seven NGOs act before the Court in important cases likely to set precedents, and most often relating to freedom of expression, the right to asylum, LGBT rights, conditions of detention, and minority rights.

Since 2009, there have been at least 185 cases which have given rise to the publication of a judgment of the ECHR in which at least one of the seven NGOs has visibly acted. In 72 of them, at least one of these NGOs clearly acted as the applicant, or as the applicant’s legal representative.

During this same period, these NGOs were also authorized to intervene as a third party in more than 120 cases which lead to the publication of a judgment. Frequently, due to the strategic importance of a case, several of these NGOs join forces to intervene together, thus demonstrating their doctrinal proximity.

The favourite mode of action of NGOs before the Court is through these third-party interventions, also called amicus curiae (friend of the court). This procedure is a practice by which a private or legal person submits to the attention of the Court elements of assessment on a case in which it is not a party to the initial proceedings. The author of the third intervention then becomes a “third party” in the case. This procedure is very beneficial, even if the neutrality and the exteriority of the participants are often only a facade.

There are also often cases where there is an indirect link through NGO funding.

You might remember in 2018 that the European Court of Human Rights ruled that insulting Islam's Prophet Mohammed is not covered by freedom of expression as it "could stir up prejudice and put at risk religious peace”.

The case had arisen after a Freedom Party of Austria member was prosecuted for having claimed that the Prophet Muhammad was a paedophile during a private seminar that she had delivered to an audience of around 30 people.

Judge Mārtiņš Mits served as one of seven judges on this case. Judge Mits has been teaching since 1999 at the Riga Law School, of which he became a vice-rector, as well as at the Judicial Training Center in Latvia, both founded and cofunded by the Open Society of Latvia.

The presence of former NGO collaborators within the court has been reinforced by the adoption of guidelines for the selection of judges which provides for the intervention of NGOs at all stages of the national phase of the procedure.

This means NGOs are helping to pick ECHR judges and those judges are then ruling in their favour.

European Center for Law and Justice

ECHR: Conflicts of Interest Between Judges and NGOs

When we looked more closely at the background of the judges of the European Court of Human Rights, we never imagined the troubling discoveries we would...

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