Religion – Weltanschauung – Recht [ RWR ]

In today’s Chamber judgment in the case of Orlović and Others v. Bosnia and Herzegovina (application no. 16332/18) the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 (protection of property) to the European Convention on Human Rights. The case concerned a church built by the Serbian Orthodox Parish on the applicants’ land after they had had to flee their property during the 1992– 95 war. The Court found in particular that the authorities’ failure to comply with final and binding decisions of 1999 and 2001 ordering full repossession of the land by the applicants, without any justification on the part of the Government for such inaction, had seriously frustrated their property rights. It also held, by six votes to one, under Article 46 (binding force and implementation) that the respondent State had to ensure enforcement of the two decisions in the applicants’ favour, including in particular the removal of the church from the applicants’ land, at the latest within three months of this judgment becoming final. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »

The applicants are a family of 14 citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, born between 1942 and 1982. They live in Konjević Polje and Srebrenik, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They survive the first applicant’s husband and more than 20 other relatives who were killed in the Srebrenica genocide in 1995. The case concerns a church built by the Serbian Orthodox Parish on the applicants’ land after they had to flee their property in Konjević Polje during the 1992–95 war. The property belonged to the first applicant’s husband and his brother and consisted of several individual and agricultural buildings, fields and meadows. Den Rest des Beitrags lesen »