İNSAN HAKLARI - Deneme Sınavı - 5

Greece is the only member who withdrew from the CoE in 1969 before the Committee of Ministers voted for its suspension due to the military coup of 1967. It was readmitted in 1974 following the fall of the junta. Turkey was suspended from the Assembly in 1981 in response to the 1980 military coup and regained its right to vote in 1984 following the democratic elections of 1983. Russia is another member who was suspended from the Assembly from 2000 to 2001 due to its Chechnya policy

The Organization of African Unity was established in 1963 in African setting. The African Charter of Human and Peoples’ Rights (The African Charter) was adopted in 1981. UN Charter was not established in African setting.

One of the distinctive feature of the Charter is that it includes some those rights that are called “third generation human rights”.

Article 17 of the African Charter explicitly refers to the right to education and right to a free participation in the cultural life of her community.

The Court is composed of 11 Judges, who are expected by the Protocol to have high moral values, high professional recognition and experience. It is another expectation of the Protocol that the nominations should be made from among such a group of individuals, who are either academically successful or who have great practice-oriented careers. Therefore, the answer in A, having international reputation, is not one of the expected qualifications of the Judges.

The American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man define the protection of human rights on an international level as “the guiding principle” of American legal systems.

The dates when these actions took place are as follow: The Organization of American States (30 April 1948) -Inter-American Human Rights Commission (in the year 1959)-The American Convention of Human Rights (in November 1969). This makes option C the correct answer.

Both The African Charter and The American Convention of Human Rights share the same clause focusing on freedoms recognized and guaranteed  without distinction of any kind such as race, color, sex, language, religion and  social origin.

The clause in related to punishment states "Capital punishment shall not be imposed upon persons who, at the time the crime was committed, were under 18 years of age or over 70 years of age; nor shall it be applied to pregnant women." Therefore, A is the correct answer.

The first actor created for the better execution of the rules available in the African Charter is the so-called Banjul Commission. The Commission consists of 11 members.

The Protocol came into force on 25 January 2004. Following its entry into force, the first judges of the Court was elected in 2006 by the African Union. D is the correct answer.

Katleb considers human dignity as an existential value; value or worthiness is imputed to the identity of the person or the species. The correct answer is D

The CoE, which introduces itself as “the continent’s leading human rights organisation” was founded on 5 May 1949 by the Treaty of London that officially “constitute the Statute of the Council of Europe”.

The Secretary-General, who is elected for a term of five years by the Parliamentary Assembly, leads and represents the Council. S/he is expected to supervise the routine operation of the organisation. Yet the main decision and policy making body of the Council is the Committee of Ministers. It officially comprises the ministers of foreign affairs of the member States who are ordinarily represented by their accredited permanent diplomatic representatives based in Strasbourg.

This “governmental” body sustains a close dialogue with the Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), which is generally seen as the “public face” and even the “motor” of the Council. The Assembly consists of 324 members of parliament from the 47 member States representing some 800 million people.

The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe (also known as the Congress of the Council of Europe) is created in 1994 as a consultative body in line with increasing importance of regional and local participation and governance. All local and regional authorities in the member states are represented in the Congress.

Some of the basic rights protected by the ECHR and its Protocols are: - the right to life; - the right to a fair trial; - the right to respect for private and family life; - freedom of thought, conscience and religion; - freedom of expression; - the right to freedom of assembly and association; - the right to an effective remedy; - the right to the peaceful enjoyment of possessions; and - the right to vote and to stand for election.

The ECHR and its Protocols prohibits the following: - the right to vote and to stand for election. - death penalty; - torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; - slavery and forced labour.

Once registered, the application becomes subject to the admissibility decision. In other words, the merits of a case is not heard and judged straight after the application. For being declared admissible, the application must meet certain criteria. First of all, the application form must have been filled in accurately and meticulously

Furthermore, the case must be compatible with the requirements of ratione materiae, ratione temporis, ratione personae or ratione loci. That is to say, the subject matter of the application should be about a right protected under the Convention and its Protocols (ratione materiae), the alleged violation must have occurred after the date of entry into force of the Convention for the respondent State (ratione temporis), and the alleged violation must have been committed by the respondent State or must be attributable to it (ratione personae). So, the so-called victim status condition should also be met (Article 34, ECHR). Accordingly, the application must be lodged either directly by the victim or, in cases where the victim died or disappeared, by his/ her heirs or close relatives that are accepted by the Court to be indirect victims.

Aiming to solve its workload problem, the Court has developed a new procedure regarding “applications concerning similar issues, also known as ‘systemic issues’ – i.e. those that arise from non-conformity of domestic law with the Convention”. It examines “one or more applications of this kind, whilst its examination of a series of similar cases is adjourned (in other words, postponed).” Once a judgement is given in a so-called “pilot case”, the Court “calls on the Government concerned to bring the domestic legislation into line with the Convention and indicates the general measures to be taken. It will then proceed to dispose of the other similar cases.