Friday 10 June 2011

Loucaides on Cyprus

Loukis Loucaides, former judge at the European Court of Human Rights, has written a short article about the Cypriotic case-law of the Court in the most recent issue of the Leiden Journal of International Law (vol. 24-2, 2011) pp. 435-465. The title of the article is 'Is the European Court of Human Rights Still a Principled Court of Human Rights After the Demopoulos Case?'. This is the abstract:

On 10 May 2001, the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgment in the case of Cyprus v. Turkey pronouncing on the legal consequences of Turkey's invasion and occupation of the northern part of Cyprus since 1974. The Court found Turkey responsible for continuing violations of the right to the home and property of Greek-Cypriots. Invoking the Namibia principle, the Court found that remedies in the occupied part of Cyprus may be regarded as domestic remedies of Turkey and that the question of their effectiveness was to be considered in the specific circumstances in which it arises. On 1 March 2010, the Court decided that a Commission in the occupied area was a remedy that should be exhausted by the complainants for the above violations. Significant legal questions were determined relating to the effectiveness of this remedy with far-reaching consequences concerning the right to home and property as well as other aspects of human rights and international law.