Ukraine keeps third top position as country with frequency of applications before ECHR

Ukrinform

Ukraine keeps three top position in the list of countries with the largest number of cases pending before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Such are the figures of the statisctics report for 10 months of 2020, published on the website of the European Court of Human Rights, according to Zmina human rights center.

Thus, 16.5% of the applications registered with the European Court of Human Rights during this period concerned charges against Ukraine. A total of 61,250 applications have been registered with the ECHR during this period, of which in 10,100 cases Ukraine was defined as defendant. 

In terms of the number of complaints, this was Russia that took first position, with 14,050 applications registered in court (22.9%), and Turkey got second place with 10,150 complaints (16.6%). Last year, the ECHR registered 25% of all complaints against Russia, and 15.5% against Turkey. Romania ranked fourth in the number of complaints to the ECHR with 8,000 applications (13.1%).

Three years ago, Ukraine was the leader in the number of complaints against it in the European Court of Human Rights, and in 2018, the country gave place to Turkey, Russia and Romania. The decrease in the number of complaints, according to experts, is due to the decision of Burmych and Others v. Ukraine on the systematic non-compliance with national court decisions, according to which the ECHRtake down from its register more than 12,000 complaints against Ukraine. However, if this part is not taken into account, the number of cases against Ukraine in the European Court of Human Rights has only increased.

Last year, there were 8,850 of them in the ECHR (14.8%). At the same time, 1,300 of them related to the developments in Donbass.

According to the publication, over the past five years, Ukraine has paid more than a billion hryvnias for proven human rights violations in the European Court of Human Rights. At the same time, the authorities did not comply with more than 60% of the 117 leading decisions of the ECHR. Leading means those solutions that identify a new significant or systemic problem in the country. This year, the government has set up a special commission to address the issue.