Since 27 September 2020, the long-frozen conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan flared up again and has taken a high death toll.
Last week, the European Court of Human Rights issued
an interim measure against Azerbaijan in
a case lodged by Armenia. The Court called both parties to the conflict to
secure the Convention rights and refrain from any military actions. Since then,
however, the conflict has only escalated. Furthermore, reports suggest of the risk of
involvement of other States, including Turkey in support of Azerbaijan. Against
this background, on 6 October 2020 the ECtHR has issued another interim measure in relation to
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, this time against Turkey in a case lodged by
Armenia. The Court “now calls on all States directly or indirectly involved in
the conflict, including Turkey, to refrain from actions that contribute to
breaches of the Convention rights of civilians [sic!], and to respect their
obligations under the Convention.” The interim measure suggests that Turkey
could be either directly or indirectly involved in the conflict.
In the past years, we have seen an increase of
requests for interim measures in inter-State and other frozen conflicts in
Europe. The Court has issued numerous interim measures in relation to the
conflicts in Ukraine and the Caucasus. The practice suggests that in relation
to such conflicts, States have a scarce record of complying with interim
measures. Although interim measures are provided only in Rules of the Court,
the Strasbourg Court has held that failure to comply
with them leads to a breach of the Convention.
The
wider the scope of an interim measure, it seems, and the higher the stakes for
states, the less likely that the measures will be complied with. And
as a consequence of that same wide scope (here “actions that contribute to
breaches of the Convention rights”), it will be also much more contentious
at a later stage to assess whether the interim measure has been complied with.
Potentially another context in which the Court is dragged into a variety of
‘lawfare’ between states, rather than being able to stick to its roles of
providing individual justice and constitutional-type interpretation of the
Convention.
Kushtrim
Istrefi and Antoine Buyse
