War Migrants and International Human Rights Law: What ECtHR Case Law has to say about it?
This collaborative venture is a part of celebration events by the Levan Alexidze Foundation across April 2021 commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Act on the Restoration of the Independent Statehood of Georgia, under the wider umbrella of the events promoting human rights and democratic standards, dedicated to the 95th jubilee of the merited scientist, professor and public figure, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, the founder of the International Law school in Georgia Levan Alexidze, late Full Member of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences.
The webinar featured Prof. Dr. Marko Milanovic, Professor of Public International Law at the University of Nottingham and a member of the EJIL’s Editorial Board and Mr Giorgi Nakashidze, PhD candidate and researcher of Public International Law as well as Prof. Dr. Ketevan Khutsishvili, Director of International Criminal Law Centre and Editor-in-Chief of the Levan Alexidze Journal of International Law in a discussion moderated by Dr. Saba Pipia, Associate Professor at the Georgian-American University, currently a Visiting Scholar at the Michigan State University.
The speakers scrutinized various aspects of the recent judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Georgia v. Russia (II). The discussion was concerted around the issues such as: why did the Court exclude the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation for violations occurring during the active phase of hostilities of the 2008 August war; how the denial of the right to return of IDPs to their homes can amount to a violation of freedom of movement and whether property claims should also be discussed while analyzing the right to return of war migrants. The conversation referred to the established case-law of the European Court of Human Rights in this regard. Finally, the speakers also considered the challenges in enforcement of this decision as well as apparent impact of the judgement on future inter-state cases (Georgia v. Russia (IV), Ukraine v. Russia) at the ECtHR. The discussion was followed by the Question & Answer session, where the panelists and webinar participants also discussed displacement, property rights, and other related issues in light of the European Convention on Human Rights.