09/09/2020 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
PACE’s Legal Affairs Committee is calling for national legal frameworks to regulate the use of Artificial Intelligence in police and criminal justice work, based on core principles of transparency, fairness, safety, privacy, and the clear attribution of human responsibility for all decisions in...
09/09/2020 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
“The criminal law, civil law and human rights implications of the development and introduction of autonomous vehicles must be regulated in accordance with Council of Europe standards,” said the Legal Affairs Committee, meeting by videoconference. The report by Ziya Altunyaldiz (Turkey, NR...
09/09/2020 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
The Committee on Legal Affairs expressed its concern by the numerous cases of violations of lawyers’ rights, including attacks on their safety and independence, in recent years. Lawyers continue to be targeted for their involvement in human rights-related cases, or for their work denouncing...
04/09/2020 | Monitoring
Three PACE rapporteurs have urged the Azerbaijan authorities to review the case of opposition politician Tofig Yagublu, who has just been sentenced to four years and three months in prison on charges of “hooliganism”. Mr Yagublu, one of Azerbaijan’s leading opposition politicians and a member of...
02/09/2020 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
PACE General Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders in Council of Europe member states, Alexandra Louis (France, ALDE), together with the co-rapporteurs for the monitoring of Turkey, Thomas Hammarberg (Sweden, SOC) and John Howell (United Kingdom, CE/DA), have reacted to the death...
02/09/2020 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
André Gattolin (France, ALDE), the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly’s (PACE) rapporteur on “Ending enforced disappearances on the territory of the Council of Europe” has today expressed outrage that Dmitry Pavlichenko is still out in the streets of Minsk threatening demonstrators instead...
03/08/2020 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
In August 2014, Daesh committed genocide against the Yazidi community in region of Sinjar in northern Iraq. Reportedly, Daesh killed 5000 Yazidi civilians and sold thousands more into slavery. Hundreds of thousands of Yazidis had to flee their homes. In its Resolution 2091 (2016) on “Foreign...
31/07/2020 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Sunna Ævarsdóttir (Iceland, SOC), rapporteur of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) on reported cases of political prisoners in Azerbaijan, and Stefan Schennach (Austria, SOC) and Sir Roger Gale (United Kingdom, EC/DA), co-rapporteurs on monitoring of Azerbaijan, have today...
15/07/2020 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Titus Corlatean (Romania, SOC), PACE general rapporteur on the abolition of the death penalty, expressed his deep regret at the decision of the United States of America Federal Government to resume executions in the week of 13 July. “Whilst I have every sympathy for all those affected by the...
10/07/2020 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
“Daphne’s brutal assassination continues to cast a dark shadow over Maltese public life,” said Pieter Omtzigt (Netherlands, EPP/CD), PACE rapporteur on the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia and the rule of law in Malta, in a statement to mark 12 July 2020, the 1,000th day since her death...
02/07/2020 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Whilst a ‘state of emergency’ may allow for a more effective response to a major health crisis like that of COVID-19, it might also be potentially hazardous from the perspective of human rights, democracy and the rule of law. But according to the Committee on Legal Affairs, “there should and need...
25/06/2020 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
On the occasion of World Drug Day and the Global Day of Action for the #SupportDontPunish Campaign, Assembly rapporteur Hannah Bardell (United Kingdom, NR) and rapporteur for opinion Joseph O’Reilly (Ireland, EPP/CD) called for European drug policies to be consistent with human rights standards...