The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
1. – Introduction
In its judgment of 4 June 2024 in the case of Sokolovskiy v. Russia the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) dealt with the issue of religious hate speech as a criminal offence interfering with the right to freedom of expression and information under Article 10 ECHR (see also Lenis v. Greece and Tagiyev and Huseynov v. Azerbaijan). Continue reading
Hate speech and violence against LGBTQI+ individuals are on the rise in Europe. In 2022, ILGA Europe reported an increase in both the number of cases of violence, as well as in their severity. As for hate speech, this was by no means limited to furtive cases; politicians in several countries (including Belgium) reportedly made numerous derogatory or hateful public statements concerning LGBTQI+ persons. Continue reading
In the wake of the digital revolution, questions surrounding the right to privacy and the right to be forgotten have come to the fore. With the digitalisation of press archives, what once required extensive archival research can now be discovered – even sometimes accidentally – through a simple online search. This is what led the Belgian Courts to order that Mr Hurbain anonymise an article in the online archive of the Le Soir newspaper. Before the European Court of Human Rights (the Court, ECtHR) Mr Hurbain argued that this order had violated his right to freedom of expression. Continue reading
Earlier in July 2023, a blog post by Jacob van de Kerkhof discussed the shortcomings of the recent Grand Chamber judgment in Sanchez v. France, in which the Court expanded its intermediary liability rules for hate speech posted by third parties to individual users of social media platforms. Continue reading
Self-confident people are usually not too concerned about what other people post on their social media pages. But they should be. On 15 May 2023, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’ or ‘the Court’) released its judgment in the case of Sanchez v France, following an earlier Chamber decision which found no violation of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In a lengthy decision, the Grand Chamber explored the limits of freedom of expression in the context of hate speech in an election-related setting and intermediary liability for actors on the internet. Continue reading
On 23 January 2023, the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR found that restricting and labelling a book of fairy tales as harmful to children solely because of LGBTI content breached Article 10 ECHR. For the first time in the Court’s case-law, Macatė v. Lithuania (app. no. 61435/19) assessed restrictions imposed on literature about same-sex relationships which is aimed directly at children and written in a style and language easily accessible to them. Continue reading
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has recently delivered a judgment in which, for the first time, it refers to the notion of SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation). Continue reading
On 16 February 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (‘the Court’) decided ground-breaking cases of minority othering: Behar and Gutman; Budinova and Chaprazov. The twin cases, stemming from collective domestic litigation, concern anti-Semitic/ anti-Roma hate speech. Continue reading
On 2 February 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) unanimously found that the criminal proceedings against an artist’s satirical collage ‘insulting’ the Turkish Prime Minister violated his right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Continue reading
The fourth section of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered a remarkable judgment in the case of L.B. v. Hungary (application no. 36345/16) on January 12, 2021). The publication of taxpayers’ personal data on the tax authority’s website for failing to fulfil their tax obligations constitutes no violation of the right to private life as established under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Continue reading
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