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...
24/05/2022 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
The Legal Affairs Committee is “appalled” by the large and growing number of political prisoners in the Russian Federation and the “pattern of systematic repression” against any and all opponents of the current authorities. The European Court of Human Rights has delivered multiple judgments in...
24/05/2022 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
PACE’s Legal Affairs Committee has said that, based on the evidence made available to its rapporteur by Ukrainian and Dutch authorities, it considers “as the most convincing scenario by far” that flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine in 2014 by a Buk missile made available to pro-Russian...
24/05/2022 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
The Legal Affairs Committee yesterday deplored the "dismal human rights situation” in the North Caucasus, where widespread fear and impunity of agents of the regional and federal authorities for serious human rights violations continue to prevail. None of the recommendations contained in the...
27/04/2022 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Damien Cottier (Switzerland, ALDE), the Chairperson of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), has made the following statement: “I strongly condemn the arbitrary arrest of Vladimir Kara-Murza, a well-known Russian opposition...
14/04/2022 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
PACE's General Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, and rapporteur on political prisoners in Russia, Sunna Ævarsdóttir, (Iceland, SOC), today reacted to the sentence of Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian historian and opposition politician, to 15 days administrative detention for...
05/04/2022 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
The Legal Affairs Committee, meeting in Paris, denounced the frequent excessive use of force by law enforcement officers in member States, “violating the principles of necessity, proportionality, precaution, and non-discrimination", notably in policing peaceful demonstrations, in handling...