The development of the human rights factor in cultural heritage protection: Interrelationships and new international legal trends

Метою статті є аналіз становлення та розвитку пам’яткоохоронного законодавства в Україні.
 Наукова новизна статті полягає в аналізі основних законодавчих і підзаконних актів України, завдяки яким відбулося реформування сфери охорони культурної спадщини в Україні та приведення її у відповідність до міжнародних норм і стандартів.
 Висновки. У законодавчому забезпеченні охорони культурної спадщини України можна до певної міри умовно виділити кілька етапів. Перший розпочався із прийняттям Декларації про державний суверенітет України від 16 липня 1990 р., яка започаткувала зміну державних підходів до культурної спадщини України, задекларувавши культурне відродження українського народу й необхідність повернення національних, культурних та історичних цінностей України, що знаходяться за її межами. Водночас базовим актом стали Основи законодавства України про культуру від 14 лютого 1992 р. Саме Основи законодавства України про культуру визначили правові засади діяльності органів публічної влади у сфері охорони культурної спадщини, а також започаткували процес формування Державного реєстру національного культурного надбання. Конституція України від 28 червня 1996 р. більш послідовно, у порівнянні з Конституцією УРСР, забезпечила гарантії культурних прав громадян та обов’язки держави щодо охорони культурної спадщини. На цьому етапі було ратифіковано ряд міжнародних актів у сфері охорони культурної спадщини, а також прийнято національні законодавчі й підзаконні акти, спрямовані на імплементацію цих норм у національне законодавство України, зокрема Закон України «Про вивезення, ввезення та повернення культурних цінностей» від 21 вересня 1999 р. Другий етап розпочався з ухваленням Закону України «Про охорону культурної спадщини» від 8 червня 2000 р., в якому враховані основні тенденції міжнародно-правового забезпечення охорони культурної спадщини, зокрема положення Конвенції ЮНЕСКО про охорону всесвітньої культурної і природної спадщини 1972 р. Законом урегульовані права та обов’язки суб’єктів охорони культурної спадщини, а також порядок формування Державного реєстру нерухомих пам’яток України за категоріями національного й місцевого значення. На цьому етапі ухвалені й такі важливі нормативні акти, як Закон України «Про охорону археологічної спадщини» від 18 березня 2004 р. і Загальнодержавна програма збереження та використання об’єктів культурної спадщини на 2004–2010 роки, затверджена Законом України від 20 квітня 2004 р. Третій етап розпочався з ухваленням Закону України «Про культуру» від 14 грудня 2010 р. і триває донині. На цьому етапі ухвалено ряд важливих змін до законодавства, спрямованих на приведення українського пам’яткоохоронного законодавства до міжнародних норм і стандартів, зокрема щодо збереження пам’яток культурної спадщини, включених до Списку всесвітньої спадщини ЮНЕСКО.

The Aftermath of Destruction of Cultural Heritage: Factoring In Cultural Rights in Post-Conflict Recovery Processes

Метою статті є аналіз праць українських вчених, присвячених питанням правової охорони та збереження культурної спадщини, їх систематизація і виділення основних напрямків дослідження.
 Наукова новизна полягає в комплексному аналізі стану дослідження питань правової охорони культурної спадщини українськими вченими з часу здобуття незалежності України. Проаналізовані наукові праці систематизовано за проблемним принципом і виділено основні напрямки досліджень. Доведено, що питання правової охорони культурної спадщини досліджувалися не лише вченими-правознавцями, а й представниками суміжних галузей науки – фахівцями з державного управління, міжнародних відносин, історії, культурології, політології та ін.
 Висновки. Аналіз праць українських вчених дає підстави стверджувати, що питанням охорони та збереження культурної спадщини за роки незалежності України присвячено кілька десятків монографій і дисертаційних досліджень, кількість наукових статей вже перелічується сотнями, ще більше оприлюднених наукових повідомлень і тез виступів на міжнародних і всеукраїнських наукових конференціях, семінарах та інших наукових і експертних форумах. При цьому проблематика правової охорони культурної спадщини досліджувалася не лише вченими-правознавцями, а й представниками суміжних галузей науки – фахівцями з державного управління, міжнародних відносин, історії, культурології, політології та ін.
 Аналіз наукових праць дав змогу виокремити такі основні напрямки наукових досліджень:
 1) узагальнюючі й теоретичні праці з питань охорони культурної спадщини;
 2) праці, присвячені міжнародно-правовій охороні культурної спадщини; діяльності міжнародних організацій та інституцій; питанням реституції об’єктів культурної спадщини;
 3) праці, присвячені зарубіжному досвіду законодавчого забезпечення та політиці держав/держави у сфері охорони культурної спадщини; порівняльні дослідження зарубіжного й українського законодавства;
 4) праці з конституційного й адміністративного права України, пов’язані із забезпеченням культурних прав людини, політикою держави та діяльністю національних інституцій у сфері охорони культурної спадщини;
 5) праці, присвячені проблемі відповідальності (адміністративної, кримінальної, цивільної) за порушення законодавства у сфері охорони культурної спадщини;
 6) праці, які висвітлюють регіональні особливості правової охорони культурної спадщини в Україні.

The UN Security Council and the UN Human Rights Council have increasingly addressed the destruction of cultural heritage in recent years, reflecting an expanded focus on cultural heritage protection across the UN system. This chapter examines the approaches of these two bodies to cultural heritage destruction and explores how their approaches have mutually reinforced each other but also reflected their different mandates: international peace and security and international human rights, respectively. This chapter starts with an analysis of some of the key Human Rights Council resolutions on the matter, as well as the work of its special procedures, in particular the Special Rapporteur in the Field of Cultural Rights. It then looks at the resolutions of the Security Council both to assess the manner in which the Security Council has introduced cultural heritage destruction to the peace and security agenda and also to identify whether the Security Council has additionally addressed such destruction as a human rights violation. The chapter concludes with discussion of whether a human rights approach to cultural heritage destruction should be adopted more widely.

In the article, the problem of the crime of aggression and the protection of cultural heritage is extensively analyzed in legal literature with the diversity of opinions and important international documents. It is noted that the crime of aggression, which is a type of international crime, is also directed against the destruction of cultural heritage. The article argues that the crime of aggression and the protection of cultural heritage are closely related to human rights, which should be linked to the provision of cultural rights as a whole. Therefore, the problems of cultural heritage protection should be analyzed in close interaction with human rights. In the end, a number of theoretical and practical proposals are put forward on the problem of the crime of aggression and the protection of cultural heritage and human rights. Thus, it is noted that in order to increase the responsibility of the states in connection with the crime of aggression, the implementation mechanisms of the adopted international documents should be precisely formed and the relevant responsibility measures should be strengthened.

The study aimed to analyse how the Ukrainian legal system implements the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, as well as to identify problems and prospects for improving this process. The article used methods of legal analysis of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, comparison of national legislation with the European Convention on Human Rights, analysis of the statistics of the European Court of Human Rights, research on the implementation of European Court of Human Rights decisions at the national level, hermeneutics to identify terminological gaps, analysis of the implementation of European standards in the national legal system, and deduction to identify key issues in cases against Ukraine. An analysis of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights revealed numerous systemic human rights violations in Ukraine, particularly in the areas of conditions of detention, unlawful arrests and lengthy court proceedings. Problems with non-enforcement of court decisions and violations of the rights to liberty and dignity have been confirmed by numerous cases, such as Gongadze v. Ukraine and Kharchenko v. Ukraine. Amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine following the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, in particular the limitation of the term of pre-trial detention, have reduced the number of cases of prolonged detention The study aimed to analyse how the Ukrainian legal system implements the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, as well as to identify problems and prospects for improving this process. The article used methods of legal analysis of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, comparison of national legislation with the European Convention on Human Rights, analysis of the statistics of the European Court of Human Rights, research on the implementation of European Court of Human Rights decisions at the national level, hermeneutics to identify terminological gaps, analysis of the implementation of European standards in the national legal system, and deduction to identify key issues in cases against Ukraine. An analysis of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights revealed numerous systemic human rights violations in Ukraine, particularly in the areas of conditions of detention, unlawful arrests and lengthy court proceedings. Problems with non-enforcement of court decisions and violations of the rights to liberty and dignity have been confirmed by numerous cases, such as Gongadze v. Ukraine and Kharchenko v. Ukraine. Amendments to the Criminal Code of Ukraine following the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, in particular the limitation of the term of pre-trial detention, have reduced the number of cases of prolonged detention

The Nuremberg tribunal was the expression and the beginning of states' recognition of their duty to prosecute genocide and other gross human rights violations. It was a first step towards fulfillin...

One expression of cultural rights is the right to enjoy cultural heritage. However, the latter is not efficiently protected in situations of armed conflict. In many cases, armed non-State groups (ANSGs) have destroyed or looted cultural heritage items. The United Nations Security Council has intervened with Resolution 2347 (2017), welcomed by many as a milestone in the international protection of cultural heritage in conflict situations. However, this Resolution presents several limitations. The protection of cultural heritage from destruction and exploitation does not appear as the main focus, but rather as a means to fight terrorist groups. The attacks against cultural heritage are considered “war crimes”, but only “under certain circumstances”. The Resolution encourages States “that have not yet done so to consider ratifying” treaties on the issue in question; however, these instruments are treaties drafted and ratified by States. Problems of compliance by non-State actors, as ANSGs, arise. Hence, the capacity of theResolution to effectively protect cultural heritage in conflicts involving ANSGs is debated. This paper analyses the text of Resolution 2347 (2017), resorting to traditional means of interpretation to highlight its limitations, and considers how a general sense of the necessity to protect cultural heritage from attacks committed by ANSGs has emerged, as demonstrated by the International Criminal Court's Al Mahdi case. The paper then considers other ways to guarantee the protection of cultural heritage from ANSGs. A proposal for stronger protection of cultural heritage by States through both international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) is presented. In particular, the connection between the protection of cultural heritage, the guarantee of cultural rights and other human rights is presented, resorting to instruments of doctrine and analyzing instruments of practice. Finally, the case for the stronger international cooperation for the protection of cultural heritage is made; problems of compliance by ANSGs may persist, but the systematic destruction of cultural heritage items can be considered a violation of cultural rights, thus requiring the cooperation of all international stakeholders.

This article seeks to analyze and explain the UNESCO’s procedures for the protection of cultural heritage in Syria and Iraq through comparative method and use of library resources. Cultural heritage in these countries has been always prone to destruction and theft due to armed conflicts. The terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq seek to eradicate the culture and identity of these two countries through destruction of cultural heritage (cultural cleansing) or illicit trade of cultural heritage. UNESCO has focused on combating cultural crimes within a special procedure, known as “Cultural Heritage Regime”, in order to protect the cultural heritage. According to the analysis of the present paper, UNESCO has failed to prevent the destruction of the cultural heritage in Syria and Iraq. However, this organization has been successful in reconstructing cultural heritage of Syria and Iraq. It also has acted successfully in cooperating with relevant institutions in order to confront with cultural crimes. Having regard to the UNESCO’s legal procedure, most of the rules applied to the status of cultural heritage in Syria and Iraq are related to the international rules for the protection of cultural heritage during armed conflicts, which include the UNESCO’s 1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Heritage in the Event of Armed Conflict and its protocols, as well as customary international humanitarian law. Regarding the declarative procedure, UNESCO has played an important role in alerting the international public opinion in order to protect the cultural heritage in Syria and Iraq.

The study examines the specifics of the obligations of states that are parties to the European Convention on Human Rights (hereinafter referred to as the "Convention") regarding investigations into violations of the Convention in the context of an armed conflict. The research relevance is predetermined by the rapid development of the practice of the European Court of Human Rights in recent years, as well as the significant burden on Ukrainian law enforcement agencies due to the urgent need to investigate massive violations of human rights committed in the context of Russian military aggression. The research aims to generalize the current practice of the European Court of Human Rights regarding the procedural obligations of the state in the context of armed conflict. The basis of the research was the analytical method, the method of specific sociological research. The issue of the jurisdictional connection between the duty to investigate and the state party to the Convention, the spectrum of violations to be investigated, the prerequisites for the duty to investigate violations, and the content of procedural obligations in the context of an armed conflict are considered. Jurisdiction of the Convention on Human Rights for Art. 1 Convention, in particular regarding procedural obligations, are primarily territorial; however, there are some exceptions to this general principle. The spectrum of violations for which the state party to the Convention has procedural obligations covers all serious violations of the Convention. The prerequisites for the obligation to investigate a violation may be a) a crime report; and/or b) the presence of signs indicating the commission of a violation, even in the absence of a report of a crime. To investigations of violations committed in the context of an armed conflict, the European Court of Human Rights applies the same criteria for the effectiveness of the investigation as under normal conditions (independence, adequacy (thoroughness), public control, and involvement of the victim), given the objective difficulties, caused by hostilities. The practical value lies in outlining the specific obligations of Ukraine under the Convention regarding the investigation of mass violations of human rights during the war

The article analyses the process of applying the European Court of Human Rights case law and the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 1950 in criminal proceedings in Ukraine. The basic principles arising from the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and their impact on national legislation and court practice are investigated. Particular attention is paid to the issues of observance of the right to a fair trial, presumption of innocence, prohibition of torture and effective investigation of human rights violations. The key cases of the European Court of Human Rights against Ukraine, which have determined the directions of reforms in the field of criminal justice, are analysed. The problems of implementation of the European Court of Human Rights case law in the criminal justice system of Ukraine, in particular, the formal approach to the use of case law, the lack of an effective mechanism for the execution of judgments and insufficient training of law enforcement and law enforcement agencies are investigated. The following prospects for improving the application of the European Court of Human Rights case law in criminal proceedings in Ukraine are identified: 1) the amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine to comply with European standards, in particular, with regard to the right to a fair trial, the presumption of innocence, protection against torture and unlawful detention, ill-treatment, etc.; 2) the development of recommendations to improve the training of judges, prosecutors, lawyers and pre-trial investigation bodies; 3) the strengthening of control over the observance of human rights, the reasonableness of the time limits during the pre-trial investigation, and fair and lawful trial; The following prospects for improving the application of the European Court of Human Rights case law in criminal proceedings in Ukraine are identified: 4) the improvement of procedures for verification, evaluation and examination of evidence in order to protect the defence from unlawful actions of the prosecution; 5) the introduction of mechanisms for the effective implementation of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in individual cases; 6) the provision of adequate funding and resources to law enforcement and law enforcement agencies.

Правова охорона культурної спадщини в Україні хоча й не така давня як, приміром, у Франції, проте має власну столітню історію. За цей час сформувалася досить значна джерельна база, яка істотно збагатилася за роки державної незалежності України. Разом із тим спостерігається певна тяглість не лише політики у сфері охорони культурної спадщини, а й відповідних правових джерел. Як наслідок, увесь масив правових джерел з питань охорони культурної спадщини потребує не лише докладного вивчення, систематизації та узагальнення, а й, зрештою, критичного переосмислення.Метою статті є здійснення класифікації джерельної бази правової охорони культурної спадщини в Україні та стислий аналіз окремих видів джерел.Наукова новизна полягає у виділенні й аналізі основних джерел правової охорони культурної спадщини в Україні, передусім міжнародно-правових документів та національних актів законодавства. Розглянуто як джерела права охорони культурної спадщини, так і джерельну базу дослідження. Здійснено класифікацію джерельної бази правової охорони культурної спадщини в Україні. За результатами дослідження виділено чотири основні види джерел.Висновки. Класифікація джерельної бази правової охорони культурної спадщини в Україні базується на поширених класифікаціях джерел права і виділенні основних видів писемних джерел, які застосовуються у джерелознавстві. У нашому дослідженні виділено такі види джерел: 1) національні нормативно-правові акти; 2) міжнародно-правові акти; 3) довідкову літературу, зокрема енциклопедії та словники, путівники та довідники, каталоги та бібліографічні покажчики тощо; 4) аналітичні записки, звернення, заяви, інформаційні повідомлення, листування органів, уповноважених на вироблення та здійснення політики у сфері охорони культурної спадщини, а також пам’яткоохоронних громадських організацій, товариств тощо.

Regional human rights courts like the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), and the African Court of Human and People's Rights (ACtHPR) have become popular sites of mobilization for victims and activists who seek justice when justice fails at home. Besides being platforms for individual remedy, human rights courts increasingly shape social norms and state policy within countries, making them attractive avenues for rights advocates to develop new norms or to push domestic authorities to reform legislation. The judges of these courts can decide, for example, whether same-sex couples have a right to be married, if prisoners have the right to vote or receive HIV/AIDS treatment, or when a state can deport illegal immigrants to a country where they will likely be tortured. As these courts pass their judgments, they often find themselves in conflict with states that are violating human rights of marginalized groups on a large scale and are unwilling to implement international rulings. Although international human rights courts have become increasingly popular venues among victims and activists who seek justice when justice fails at home, we are only beginning to understand how activists play roles in shaping the development of regional human rights courts' case law—the body of judgments that shapes how judges will make their decisions in the future. We now have plenty of international relations and international legal research on the interactions between states and international courts: how judges in these courts wrestle between deferring to the interests of member state governments whose actions are on trial and sticking closely to the conventions' fundamental yet evolving principles (Alter et al., 2019; Helfer & Voeten, 2014). As some states begin to resist international courts' authority, scholars have begun to examine the dynamics of this backlash (Hillebrecht, 2022; Madsen et al., 2018; Sandholtz et al., 2018). Recent studies have also demonstrated that human rights advocates—whether NGOs or individual lawyers—have a significant impact on shaping the jurisprudence of international courts and the impact judgments have in concrete locations (Kahraman, 2018; Sundstrom, 2014; van der Vet, 2012; Kurban, 2020; Conant, 2018; Harms, 2021; Cichowski, 2016; Hodson, 2011; Haddad, 2018). Meanwhile, these advocates themselves have been subject to repression and stigmatization by governments as part of the backlash phenomenon. Without an adequate understanding of the factors shaping activists' engagement with international courts, we risk undervaluing their strategic impact on the expansion of case law, the human rights protection of marginalized groups who cannot find remedies at home, and the domestic implementation of these judgments in an age of state backlash. In this section, we summarize the three papers contained in this symposium and their original contributions to these themes. Over the last decade, dozens of countries have erected legal barriers or started vilifying campaigns to stymie the work of NGOs (Buyse, 2018; Chaudhry, 2022). One tactic in this toolkit is the enactment of burdensome regulation on NGOs that receive funds from foreign donors as they allegedly promote foreign agendas (Christensen & Weinstein, 2013; Dupuy et al., 2021). States that frequently abuse human rights are especially prone to target NGOs that engage in strategic litigation (Hillebrecht, 2019). Most NGOs depend on foreign funding, and NGOs that litigate international cases fall disproportionately in this category, but do funders affect the selection of cases? In “Foreign Agents or Agents of Justice? Private Foundations, NGO Backlash, and International Human Rights Litigation,” Heidi Haddad and Lisa Sundstrom examine the extent to which Western donors, particularly private foundations, have encouraged NGOs in Europe to litigate at the ECtHR as a human rights advocacy strategy. They examine overall patterns of donor funding and NGO litigation records, and look in more detail at the case of Russian NGOs' foreign funding and litigation records. The analysis is extremely timely, as the Russian government's criminalization of independent civil society actors, especially in the human rights field, and their accusation that foreign funding turns NGOs into “foreign agents” have been crucial elements of the Russian regime's autocratization. This claim has also provided fuel for Russia's disenchantment with the ECtHR in recent years, contributing to the assessment of many observers that Russia's full-scale attack on Ukraine was the last straw in an inevitable collision course leading to its exit from the Council of Europe. Haddad and Sundstrom debunk the idea that foreign donors are pushing NGOs toward strategies of human rights litigation. Instead, they argue, there is more evidence that NGOs themselves promoted the mechanism of international litigation as a strategy that donors later adopted. This article is a poignant reminder of the advocacy tools that Russian human rights activists and citizens have lost as a result of their government's departure from the Council of Europe, including ECtHR jurisdiction. Yet it also provides insight into the likely roles of foreign donors in other country cases where NGOs are using international court litigation as a human rights advocacy strategy, which is often a target of the ire of national governments, as explored in the next article in the symposium. When states attack human rights NGOs within their borders and/or international human rights courts themselves, how does this affect the willingness of those NGOs to take cases to international courts, and the ways in which they do so? De Silva and Plagis ask this question in their article about state backlash against NGOs in the case of Tanzania and the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights. A fascinating empirical question they pose is: does state backlash against NGOs increase NGO litigation at international courts (to contest state repression at those courts and use international mechanisms when domestic ones are not available), roughly in line with Keck and Sikkink's famous “boomerang pattern” (Keck & Sikkink, 1998), or decrease it due to heightened fear and restricted NGO capabilities that state repression creates? Employing a process-tracing analysis of NGOs' involvement in three cases before the African Court at different stages of the Tanzanian government's backlash against the Court, De Silva and Plagis find that “two-level backlash” by states can result in both phenomena, either promoting or deterring NGO legal mobilization at international human rights courts, depending on certain conditions. The three selected cases concerning the death penalty, the rights of persons with albinism, and the rights of pregnant schoolgirls and mothers, which took place at different time periods, demonstrate a number of patterns of state backlash interacting with NGO strategies. The authors find that domestic-level state backlash deterred domestic NGOs from partnering with international NGOs in litigation, but that such backlash, when it repressed domestic political and legal mobilization opportunities, actually encouraged both Tanzanian and international NGOs to turn to the African Court more frequently to seek remedies. International-level backlash in turn only deterred NGOs from international litigation when such backlash consisted of state efforts to restrict NGOs' ability to engage in litigation, and not when the international backlash was in the form of routine noncompliance with African Court rulings. Importantly, the authors find that NGO responses to state backlash were significantly shaped by their degree of legal consciousness and expertise with the rules, proceedings, and workings of the African Court. Those NGOs with less knowledge and experience were more likely to back away from engaging with the Court under the pressure of state backlash. De Silva and Plagis conclude that “NGOs' persistent human rights advocacy in the face of state backlash is a double-edged sword,” in the sense that they may not be deterred by state backlash initially, but there is a danger that their continued determination to engage in international litigation could prompt governments to engage in even more severe forms of backlash, with critical impacts on international courts and already vulnerable human rights defenders. Rights advocates have a growing menu of institutions and courts available to them. How do activists choose at which institution to lodge their cases in a world where legal remedies have diversified, or as some have argued, fragmented (Koskenniemi & Leino, 2002)? In “What Makes an International Institution Work for Labor Activists? Shaping International Law through Strategic Litigation,” Filiz Kahraman goes beyond the tendency of legal mobilization studies to only examine how activists interact with a single court or institution. Instead, Kahraman opens up how rights advocates imagine which institution is most receptive to their claims. Drawing on a comparative interview study of British and Turkish trade union activists and their legal mobilization campaigns at international courts and quasi-judicial institutions like the International Labor Organization (ILO), Kahraman examines how activists first probe and then strategically identify which court or international institution is most susceptible to their primary goals of influencing structural reforms and setting new norms. Through this probing process—or dynamic signaling game between courts and litigants—activists push a court's jurisprudence and case law into new issue areas. For instance, at the ECtHR, Turkish trade unionists challenged domestic courts' ruling that public sector workers did not have the right to establish unions, even though the ECtHR had no established case law on labor rights in 1990s. They won the case, with the ECtHR finding that Turkey violated the right of public sector workers to unionize. These cases not only had an impact within Turkey, but over the next decades, similar cases brought by British unionists would spin off the early precedent set by the Turkish legal mobilization efforts. Kahraman argues that they ultimately pushed the ECtHR to recognize the basic trade union rights as fundamental human rights. Kahraman sheds light on the often hidden strategies behind international litigation. Activists litigate not just for the immediate impact on the current case they work on, but how they envision that all the cases they work on may shape norms and domestic structural reforms further in the future. Whether an institution is perceptive of claims lies in the eye of the beholder. Kahraman finds that besides targeting institutions with high compliance rates, they also take cases to institutions with low rates of compliance, especially “if these institutions have extensive judicial authority to create new international norms.” So, it is not the de jure protection set by an international courts, but rather how activists perceive the juridical responsiveness and judicial authority of courts—or, how judges adopt either an activist approach or restraint in response to incoming cases and how willing states are to implement cases of a court, respectively—that determines why activists select certain courts or quasi-judicial institutions (like the ILO). Kahraman gives us new tools to interpret how activists perceive authority and receptiveness and respond to opportunities. Rather than static external legal remedies, courts and quasi-judicial institutions are opportunity structures that are malleable to the strategic vision of the activist or litigant. The articles in this symposium together reveal a number of key overlapping insights. At the broadest level, they demonstrate that activists' behaviors and strategies influence international courts' jurisprudence, politics within states, and the human rights outcomes of everyday citizens—and these influences have often been hidden in our existing canon of research on international courts. In addition, all of these articles show that, while activists may face challenges in their efforts, often including significant backlash from their home state governments, they also continue to retain significant agency through their creative efforts to develop legal strategies and circumvent state repression. Activists perennially innovate: sparking the ideas that inspire donors who fund them; calculating how to continue their litigation work when government actors threaten them; and taking risks in litigation to push courts to expand how they define human rights. However, along with these uplifting conclusions, there are worrying patterns that demand future research. States are increasingly pushing back against the powers of international courts to bind them to costly measures, and as this symposium has shown, national governments often point to activists as contributors to this “problem” of invasive international human rights standards. A growing body of research has tracked how human rights defenders of all kinds globally are under threat from actors like governments and corporations who disagree with their contentious actions. We need more studies that gather comprehensive data and systematically track these threats, specifically with regard to activists who engage in international human rights litigation. We suspect that such activists are likely disproportionately targeted due to the international visibility of their complaints. We also desperately need research into possible innovative responses to these threats to activists—responses from activists, funders, governments of countries that support human rights, and international courts themselves. Freek van der Vet is a University Researcher at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki and the principal investigator of the Toxic Crimes Project. Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom is Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. She is the director of the ActinCourts network at UBC and conducts research on legal mobilization by Russian activists.

The article is devoted to the issues of reproductive human rights in the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and their impact on the practice of law enforcement and constitutional-legal doctrine in Ukraine. It emphasizes that personal reproductive rights are an important element of the system of fundamental human rights. Judicial practice, including the practice of the European Court of Human Rights, has a significant impact on the regulation and implementation of reproductive rights. A priority area for the development of Ukrainian legislation is the study of the possibilities of using judicial practice in the fiel of protection and safeguarding reproductive rights. A key issue in this regard is the scope of the regulating influence of precedential rulings concerning reproductive rights, as reflected in the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. It is noted that referring to this practice is becoming a common legal practice among participants in judicial and administrative procedures. At the same time, a problem arises in applying judicial practice to relationships that are not independently regulated by law in Ukraine due to the absence of a separate legal act governing assisted reproductive technologies. It is emphasized that such a national legal act should adhere to the principles outlined in the precedential decisions of the European Court of Human Rights related to reproductive rights. The current law enforcement practice of the European Court of Human Rights demonstrates its use of a well-developed methodology for interpretation based on the consensus (legal harmonization) method, i.e., combining the interpretation of international acts and agreements with the practice of member states’ national legal systems. At the same time, the analysis of constitutional interpretations reflected in national legal systems is also important. At the level of constitutional-legal doctrine, it becomes important to form theoretical approaches to understanding the interpretative mechanisms for applying the precedent law of the European Court of Human Rights, specifically in the area of reproductive rights.

Ukraine became a member of the Council of Europe in 1995. Later on, on July 17, 1997 the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine ratified the European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) and the First Protocol and protocols number 2, 4, 7, and 11 of the Convention in accordance with the relevant Act, which opened the way for Ukrainians to the European Court of Human Rights and to its enforcement practice. The most relevant contribution of ECHR is the inclusion into it of a provision which previewed a special possibility for the High Contracting Party to issue consent to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for monitoring cases where the initiator of the trial is an individual or legal entity, not a state. The Law of Ukraine “On the enforcement and the application of the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights” came into force in February 2006 and regulates relations arising from the duty of the state to implement the decisions of the ECtHR on cases in respect of Ukraine. This article notes that Ukraine is among the top five countries against the highest number of complaints is filed by legal entities and natural persons to the European Court on the grounds of the violation of human rights. The main purpose of this contribution is the following: to determine the main problems of the implementation of the ECtHR practice in Ukraine. The problem is that, despite the introduction in the law enforcement procedures of the law of the ECtHR judgments, “On the enforcement and the application of the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights”, Ukraine has not taken any real steps to improve legislation with regard to the ECHR due to a number of objective and subjective reasons. The tasks of the article are the following: to define a place of legislative and judicial bodies in the process of implementation EСtHR’s practice; to detect the ways of correction of the defects of the national legislation and improving the practice of Ukrainian courts at all levels. The research methods used in the article include the analysis of literary sources, including theoretical literature and research materials related to the subject of the paper, cases of the European Court of Human Rights, comparative analysis of judicial practice in Ukraine and Member States, statistical analysis. The right of individual complaint, an extraordinary need for the European Court of Human Rights and the volume of work led to his enormous overload, and today no one doubts that the future European system of protection of the rights laid down in the system itself, in its elements. In particular that the European control is based on the principles of subsidiary for national legal systems, also in the : the ability of national systems to interact with the European Court, willingness to accept the precedents of this Court; willingness to perform basic and effective filter for it. So in consideration of the importance of correct application of rules of the ECHR, and case-law of the ECtHR, and having regard to the analysis of application of these rules, we made the conclusions ( results of the article ) regarding the need for the legislator to take into account “pilot judgments” of the ECtHR, to make necessary amendments to the law “On the enforcement and the application of the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights” and determine the place of the practice of the ECtHR among other sources of the law in Ukraine. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eis.0.6.1585