13/12/2022 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Ukraine’s Deputy Justice Minister Iryna Mudra spelled out proposals for a legal mechanism enabling her country to be compensated for the damage caused by Russia’s aggression during a PACE hearing in Paris on 12 December, web-streamed live. She set out detailed proposals for the creation of an...
12/12/2022 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Politicians and journalists from Poland, Spain and Greece who have been targeted by the Pegasus or similar spyware gave testimony at a public hearing of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Paris on 12 December 2022, which was live-streamed in English. The hearing...
06/12/2022 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Legal mechanisms for Ukraine to be compensated financially for the damage caused by Russia’s aggression will be the main focus of a hearing of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Paris on 12 December, to be web-streamed live, with the participation of Ukraine’s Deputy...
29/11/2022 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Sunna Ævarsdóttir (Iceland, SOC), PACE’s rapporteur for follow-up on the implementation of Resolution 2446 (2022) on “Reported cases of political prisoners in the Russian Federation”, today reacted to news about Alexei Navalny’s indefinite solitary confinement in the penal colony where he is...
15/11/2022 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
The emergence of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) – that can select and attack targets without human intervention – requires clear regulation of their development and use, to ensure respect for international humanitarian law and human rights, said the Legal Affairs Committee, by adopting...
13/10/2022 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Europe can learn “useful lessons” from the experience of prisons during the Covid pandemic, continuing to use alternatives to detention to reduce the prison population and ease overcrowding, according to PACE’s Legal Affairs Committee. In a draft resolution based on a report by Givi Mikanadze...
09/10/2022 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
On the occasion of the World Day against the Death Penalty (10 October), PACE General Rapporteur on the abolition of the death penalty Vladimir Vardanyan (Armenia, EPP/CD) made the following statement: "In this year’s World Day against the Death Penalty, we focus on capital punishment and the...
13/09/2022 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
The compulsory use of Covid passes, in particular vaccine passes – aimed at restricting travelling and access to certain public venues – entails risks of discrimination and infringements of human rights and fundamental freedoms, according to the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights. The...
12/09/2022 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Laws aimed at combating Covid “might be used to further restrict the rights and fundamental freedoms of civil society actors”, PACE’s Legal Affairs Committee has warned. Approving a report by Margreet De Boer (Netherlands, SOC), the committee said Covid restrictions had had a “deleterious effect...
06/09/2022 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
The PACE Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights held its meeting in Bern and Neuchâtel (Switzerland) on 5 and 6 September 2022. In particular, it discussed the report of its ad hoc sub-committee which visited Kyiv, Bucha and Irpin at the end of June, and decided to declassify this document...
29/06/2022 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
A cross-party delegation of ten members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE),* ending a visit to Kyiv on Ukraine’s Constitution Day (28 June 2022), has expressed shock at the level of evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity it saw, denounced the war in the...
21/06/2022 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
The PACE Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights today declassified a follow-up report prepared by Boriss Cilevičs (Latvia, SOC) on the implementation of PACE Resolution 2381 - "Should politicians be prosecuted for statements made in the exercise of their mandate?". According to the...