Today the ICJ, together with ILGA-Europe, the AIRE Centre and Human Rights Watch, submitted a joint third-party intervention to the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Oganezova v. Armenia (Application nos. 71367/12 and 72961/12).
In their written submissions to the Court, the interveners addressed the following issues:
(a)
under European and international human rights jurisprudence, the victim’s identity as an lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) person is relevant to the assessment of whether the threshold for torture and other ill-treatment under Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) has been met. Specifically, the discrimination directed towards LGBT persons may indicate a particular motive and intent that may meet the threshold of Article 3 ECHR;
(b)
the Contracting States have a positive obligation to protect persons in their jurisdiction from violence and harassment based on their real or imputed sexual orientation and/or gender identity or expression, including the obligation to prevent, investigate, prosecute, punish and remedy such acts. In particular, Contracting States have the additional procedural obligation to take all reasonable steps to establish whether any hatred or prejudice connected to a protected characteristic may have played a role in the violent attack, where acts of violence are motivated in whole or in part by prejudice against an individual’s real or imputed sexual orientation and/or gender identity or expression; and
(c)
That the attitudes and practices in responding to violence and harassment against LGBT people in Armenia provide important contextual information in analyzing the case.”
Europe-Oganezova v. Armenia-Advocacy-Legal Submission-2019-ENG (full text of submission, in PDF)