01/10/2024 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Julian Assange, accompanied by his wife Stella, took part in a parliamentary hearing on his detention and conviction - and their chilling effect on human rights - ahead of a full plenary debate on this topic by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) due on Wednesday 2 October...
01/10/2024 | Session
Propaganda can be used to manipulate public opinion and threaten our common values and human dignity, as well as the proper functioning of our democratic systems, impairing the development of free opinions and informed citizen participation in public debate and decision making, the Assembly said...
01/10/2024 | Election of Judges
The Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) today elected Anna Adamska-Gallant as judge to the European Court of Human Rights in respect of Poland. Ms Adamska-Gallant, having obtained an absolute majority of votes cast, is elected judge of the European Court of Human Rights for a term of...
01/10/2024 | Session
Opening a current affairs debate on the “Situation in the Middle-East: escalation of violence and mounting humanitarian crisis, particularly in Gaza”, Saskia Kluit (Netherlands, SOC) recalled that PACE has condemned the attacks of Hamas in the strongest words and said that PACE “must call for the...
01/10/2024 | Session
The Parliamentary Assembly today expressed its concern about the persecution of human rights defenders in Iran and abroad, in particular in the Council of Europe member States, by the Iranian regime. The resolution, unanimously adopted by PACE on the basis of the report by Max Lucks (Germany, SOC...
01/10/2024 | Women@PACE
Addressing the Women@PACE group on the 1st October – the first day of Pink October – Evgenia Kara-Murza paid tribute to leading female figures among human rights defenders or journalists fighting different battles in different countries, but all for the same values of “peace, freedom and human...
30/09/2024 | Prizes
The twelfth Václav Havel Human Rights Prize – which honours outstanding civil society action in defence of human rights – has been awarded to leading Venezuelan political figure and rights defender María Corina Machado. The 60,000-euro prize was presented at a special ceremony on the opening day...
30/09/2024 | Session
In his statement before the award ceremony for the 2024 Václav Havel Human Rights Prize, Vladimir Kara-Murza – the prize winner in 2022 – conveyed his deep respect to this year’s finalists and paid tribute to the past recipients who were still held in captivity “for the only ‘crime’ of expressing...
30/09/2024 | Session
PACE today elected, at the opening of its Autumn 2023 Session, two news Vice-Presidents: Gerardo Giovagnoli (Saint-Marin,SOC) and Andries Gryffroy (Belgique, NI). Nineteen Vice-Presidents are elected annually at the beginning of an ordinary session and remain in office until the opening of the...
30/09/2024 | Session
“Dear Vladimir, let me once again express my utmost relief to see you free, and all the more determined to continue with your fight for the free and democratic Russia which we all long for, and which poses no threat to its neighbours nor to its own citizens”, PACE President said today at the...
30/09/2024 | Election observation
“We are deeply concerned by the fact that Transparency International Georgia has been forced to close its election observation operations because of the deplorable decision by the Anti-Corruption Bureau to declare this civil society organisation and its Director as ‘subjects with a declared...
30/09/2024 | Session
PACE, meeting today in plenary session in Strasbourg, congratulated the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB) for “its flexible and tailored support to its member states” in the context of the pandemic and natural disasters, and for the rapid assistance to Ukrainian refugees. The Parliamentary...