Not implemented ECHR judgments undermine authority of international  conventions

ArmInfo. The RA NA delegation is taking part in the work of the Second Part of the Annual Session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) going on in Strasbourg. During the session the member of the delegation Arusyak Julhakyan gave a speech.

"Thank you, Madame Chair, and thank you, Konstantinos, for your  another excellent report on this very important topic.

Dear colleagues,

During the last couple of years, we have been reflecting to the  importance of implementation of the judgments of the European Court  of Human Rights, which is one of the essential problems our  organization faces. So far, the European court has delivered over  33,000 judgments. However, as of February 2025, more than 6800  judgments of the Court have not been implemented and are still  pending before the Committee of Ministers. This means that 21% of the  Court's judgments have not been implemented by the member states, and  this is a serious problem. Another crucial problem is that nearly  1150 of the unexecuted judgments have been classified as leading  cases, which require general measures to be adopted to prevent a  recurrence of the human rights violation.

The implementation of the interim measures is also of high  importance, as they are issued by the Court only in the exceptional  circumstances, where there is an imminent risk of irreparable harm,  for example when a person faces a threat to their life. Which means,  that execution of interim measures is of higher importance.  However,  despite this, the Committee of Ministers has a lack of power in this  respect.

Dear colleagues, I would like to remind all of us that one of the  conditions for membership for Council of Europe is the respect for  human rights. And the ECHR is the only abiding mechanism which is  supposed to guarantee this condition, the respect for human rights.  And this isn't optional - it's a fundamental commitment made when  joining the Convention system.

But what we see today is that the president of Azerbaijan, one of our  member states, Ilham Aliyev during an international forum titled  "Towards a new world order" declares that Azerbaijan will not comply  with the European Court of Human Rights rulings due to the suspension  of its PACE delegation's credentials. Is this acceptable for us?

Colleagues, not implemented judgments undermine the authority and  functioning of the convention system.  This is why we must reaffirm  the binding nature of judgments of the Court, further reinforce the  execution of judgments by enhancing the means at our disposal in  cases of non-compliance.

We cannot ignore the shameful statistics of the unexecuted judgments.  And when I say shameful, I mean it for this Council, because it shows  that this organization should have taken proper actions in either  introducing new mechanisms for enforcement or by thinking about  sanctions in regard of the member states, which make zero effort to  comply with the conditions of membership, in this case the respect  for human rights.

Thank you," the MP said.