Today Alexander Torshin, a Russian Senator, came forward with an initiative to set up the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Human Rights Court, reported Interfax and Gazeta.ru.
According to Torshin the CIS court should be analogues to the ECHR. The Senator named the following advantages of the CIS Human Rights Court over the ECHR: (a) the applicants to the CIS court will not need translator’s assistance, since the majority of them have a good command of the Russian language; (b) the CIS court will be of a better quality than the ECHR, since during its set-up all the “bottlenecks and problems” of the ECHR will be taken into account; and (c) the CIS court will help relieve the ECHR which is currently overloaded with applications.
According to Torshin, the CIS Court will not replace the ECHR, but rather will be an alternative: the applicants will be able to choose between the two of them.
The head of the Justice Ministry of the Russian Federation, Alexander Konovalov, welcomed this initiative, but noted that it needed further elaboration, and that he wished to understand if there is a necessity for such a CIS court right now.
Torshin also noted that his idea was not new. In 1993 the CIS member states endorsed a Statute of the CIS Human Rights Commission the main function of which is to ensure observance of the CIS Convention on human rights and fundamental freedoms by the member states. However, this commission has never worked since adoption of its Statute.
Meanwhile, to date there are eleven Member-states of the CIS,[1] and only four of them have ratified the CIS Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Russia, Belarus, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan). Others hesitate to sign it, especially those that are also members to the Council of Europe, since the latter has criticized the CIS Convention several times.
Thus, in 1998 the Venice Commission[2] concluded that the fundamental rights set forth in the CIS Convention “are generally more limited in scope than the corresponding rights” under the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, “which affords higher standards of protection.” In addition, the Venice Commission stated, that the guarantees provided by the Convention system “are more complete than those provided by the CIS Convention.”
Further, in 2001 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recommended to those Council of Europe member-states which are also the CIS members[3] “not to sign or ratify the CIS Convention on Human Rights,” since the latter offers less protection than the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, “both with regards to the scope of its contents, and with regard to the body enforcing it.”
What if Torshin’s idea is supported and the CIS Court is set up, will it be able to gain the same trust and popularity as the ECHR among the applicants? Insofar as the applicants from Russia are concerned, they will most likely prefer the ECHR over the CIS Court, at least for two reasons:
(1) Even if the CIS Court is of better quality than the ECHR, the former will apply lower standards of protection of human rights in its judgments than the latter, since the rights under the CIS Convention are more limited in scope than those under the European Convention on Human Rights; and
(2) The ECHR has gained a reputation as the court of last resort among the Russian citizens, while the CIS Court most likely will not be taken seriously due to the doubtful character of the CIS itself and the lack of interest in this organization among Russian citizens.[4]
[1] Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
[2] The Venice Commission, also known as the European Commission for Democracy through Law, is the Council of Europe's advisory body on constitutional matters.
[3] To dated there are five members of the CIS that are also members of the Council of Europe: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine.
[4] For more information about the attitude of Russian citizens to the CIS see http://bd.fom.ru/report/cat/blocks/FSU/gur050408 (In Russian).
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