ECtHR, 5th Section, Apps. Nos. 73204/13 and 74959/13, 16 December 2021

Judge O’Leary (President), Judges Yudkivska, Ilievski, Chanturia, Jelić, Bårdsen, Guyomar

The ECtHR ruled that the respondent State’s failure to protect the applicants’ public rally from homophobic and/or transphobic acts of violence by counter-demonstrators and to conduct an effective investigation into the incident breached Article 14 ECHR read with Articles 3 and 11. The individual applicants were Georgian nationals and the applicant associations were Georgian NGOs set up to promote and protect the rights of LGBT people in Georgia. They complained that the Ministry of the Interior had taken inadequate steps to protect participants in various peaceful demonstrations despite having been notified of various threats from identifiable individuals. 2 000 police officers had been deployed but had failed to protect protestors from intimidation and, in some cases, physical assault. Georgia had also failed in its duty to investigate the events. The Court was satisfied that the failures to protect and to investigate had reached the threshold required for Article 3. It awarded the damages sought by the applicants which ranged from 2 500 to 10 000 Euro although it rejected their applications for costs on the basis that they were not evidenced. Continue reading →