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MOSCOW (AP) - Four organizers of a demonstration against a journalist's
Hon. Chair, distinguished colleagues, First I would like to thank
the FES for this opportunity to address such a representative
audience and share my experience in the Regional European Human
Rights Institution - Council of Europe.
I have been a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council
of Europe since Russia's accession in January 1996 and a member
of its Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee.
Let me first provide a brief overview of the composition and
functioning of the Council of Europe.
Then I will provide an example of the Council of Europe's position
on two very well-known issues, namely the death penalty and the
fight against terrorism. Finally I will make some remarks on the
current problems of the Council of Europe.
Generally speaking, any European state can become a member of
the Council of Europe provided that it accepts the principle of
the rule of law and guarantees human rights and fundamental freedoms
to everyone under its jurisdiction. At present there are 43 member
states in the Council of Europe: in other words almost all European
states are member states.
But the Council of Europe is wider than human rights. Human rights
may exist in a friendly environment. So the Council of Europe
has wide-ranging goals. The Council of Europe is an inter-governmental
organization which aims:
- to protect human rights, pluralist democracy and the
rule of law;
- to promote awareness and encourage the development of
Europe's cultural identity and diversity;
- to seek solutions to the problems facing European society
(discrimination against minorities, xenophobia, intolerance, environmental
protection, human cloning, Aids, drugs, organized crime, etc.)
- to help consolidate democratic stability in Europe by
backing political, legislative and constitutional reform.
The Council of Europe covers all the major issues facing European
society other than defense. Its work programme includes the following
fields of activity: human rights, media, legal co-operation, social
and economic questions, health, education, culture, heritage,
sport, youth, local democracy and trans-border co-operation, the
environment and regional planning.
The Council of Europe consists of three main parts:
- The Committee of Ministers is the Council of Europe's
decision-making body, and consists of the Foreign Ministers of
the 43 member states (or their Permanent Representatives);
- The Parliamentary Assembly is the Organization's deliberative
body: its members are appointed by national parliaments;
- The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe
is a consultative body representing the local and regional authorities
of the member states.
Governments, national parliaments and local and regional authorities
are thus represented separately in the Council of Europe.
By granting consultative status to over 350 non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), the Council of Europe is building a real
partnership with the representatives of ordinary people. Through
various consultation arrangements (including discussions and colloquies)
it brings NGOs into inter-governmental activities and encourages
dialogue between members of parliament and associations on major
social issues.
Now some facts and figures about the Council of Europe.
The Council of Europe Secretariat has a permanent staff of about
1,300 drawn from the 43 member states. It is headed by a Secretary-General
- currently Walter Schwimmer (Austria) who is elected for a five-year
term by the Parliamentary Assembly and who coordinates and directs
the Council's activities.
The council is financed by the member states commensurate to
their population and resources. The budget is approximately Euro
250 million.
The Council of Europe's official languages are English and French,
but the Parliamentary Assembly also uses German, Italian and Russian
as working languages. Some other languages may be interpreted
during debates in certain conditions.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which
held its first session on August 10th, 1949, can be considered
the oldest international parliamentary assembly with a pluralistic
composition of democratically elected members of parliament established
on the basis of an inter-governmental treaty.
PACE consists of more than 500 members (representatives and substitutes).
PACE has four 5-days part-sessions every year, including a general
debate and decision-making (there are two types of decisions -
resolutions which express the PACE position and recommendations
addressed to the Council of Ministers).
In the period between the part-sessions the main PACE body is
the Bureau consisting of the leaders of the five political groups
and the heads of national delegations.
The committee meetings take place during the part-sessions and
in between as well. There are Committees on Political Affairs,
on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, Monitoring Committee, and some
others, such as Culture and Education, Refugees, Rules of Procedure
etc.
The legal framework of the Council of Europe is the number of
International Conventions, most importantly the European Convention
on Human Rights which defines and guarantees the most important
rights and freedoms and establishes a legal instrument for implementing
and defending rights and freedoms.
This instrument is the European Court of Human Rights. This Court
is accessible to everyone in Europe: decisions of the Court are
final and binding on all member states. The Human Rights Court
has special value for my country Russia as well as other new member
states from Eastern and Central Europe that support democratic
development.
The European Court granted the people with a mechanism for protecting
their rights which is especially important to the new democracies,
as the domestic judicial system is far from perfect. The Human
Rights Court certainly is not perfect and currently faces a serious
challenge, including the increasing number of complaints and the
lack of funds.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has displayed
for fifty years of existence great flexibility and adaptability
as an international inter-parliamentary body to the developments
in Europe, and in particular to the dramatic historic changes
over the past few years. No other international parliamentary
forum was so well-equipped as the Parliamentary Assembly to integrate
the new democracies of central and Eastern Europe into the family
of the other European democracies.
One of the results of the membership in the Council of Europe
is the development of national legislation to fulfill the criteria
and demands of the Council of Europe. For my country for example
I would mention as the most important legal changes the adoption
of a new criminal code and new criminal procedural code. The council's
activities in the protection of the rights of national minorities
and languages of minorities are very important for Russians after
the collapse of Soviet Union.
The Council of Europe has been at the forefront of the fight
against the death penalty for decades, and has been very successful
in this fight. Thanks to the Council of Europe, in particular,
its Parliamentary Assembly, the 43 member countries have constituted
a de facto death-penalty-free zone since 1997. The Council of
Europe's strategy to abolish the death penalty was, and is, first
and foremost a legal one, backed by political and moral pressure.
As I have already said, the European Convention on Human Rights
is at the core of the Council of Europe's legal machinery. The
European Convention on Human Rights did not, however, abolish
the death penalty. The right to life is its first substantive
article: however, in the Convention, this right is not absolute:
everyone's life is protected by law and no one should be deprived
of life apart from through a court sentence after conviction of
a crime that carries the death penalty. After the horrors of Nazi
Germany and the Second World War, most European countries were
not ready to abandon the death penalty.
But the concept of Human Rights is constantly evolving. By the
late 1960s, more and more European Countries abandoned the death
penalty, as a violation of the most fundamental human rights:
the right to life, and the right to be protected against torture,
inhuman and degrading punishment. Thus, a consensus slowly began
to emerge that the death penalty was unbefitting for a modern,
democratic and civilized society. This development was spurred
by the realization that capital punishment was an inefficient
tool of the criminal justice system: it did not deter criminals,
it was arbitrary (its imposition depended more on the individual's
position in society than on the gravity of their crime), and it
was irreversible. High-profile cases of people found innocent
after their execution shocked Europeans in many countries. This
is where the Council of Europe came in. Created to unite Europe
around the shared principles of the rule of law, respect for human
rights and pluralist democracy, the Parliamentary Assembly initiated
a proposal to legally abolish the death penalty in Europe.
The result was the drafting of Protocol 6 to the European Convention
on Human Rights, which abolishes the death penalty unconditionally
in peacetime. The Protocol was opened for signing in 1983, and
became binding on the states who ratified it a few years later.
After promoting the adoption of Protocol 6, the Parliamentary
Assembly was concerned to see it enforced in all European countries.
In 1994, the Assembly defined its position on the abolition of
capital punishment: it considers that the death penalty has no
legitimate place in the penal systems of modern civilized societies,
and that its application may be compared with torture and be seen
as an inhuman and degrading punishment within the meaning of Article
3 of the European Convention of Human Rights. The Assembly believes
that the imposition of the death penalty has proved ineffective
as a deterrent, and owing to the possible fallibility of human
justice, also tragic owing to the execution of innocent people.
As a result, the willingness to institute an immediate moratorium
on executions and abolish the death penalty in the long-term has
since 1994 become a precondition for accession to the Council
of Europe. In practical terms, this means that every country that
wanted to become a member of the Council of Europe had to commit
itself to immediately stop executions, and abolish the death penalty
in law within one to three years.
The signature and ratification of Protocol 6 was a further condition.
This gave a great boost to Protocol 6, which is now in force in
39 member countries of the Council of Europe, and has been signed
by three others.
Russia has instituted the moratorium and has signed, but not
ratified Protocol 6.
The Parliamentary Assembly also has a position on the death penalty
in Council of Europe observer states. There are two observer states
which carry on executing people: United States of America and
Japan. The Assembly is taking a number of measures to convince
the USA and Japan to institute a moratorium on executions and
abolish the death penalty. The Council of Europe already involves
the parliaments and governments of Japan and the USA in a constructive
dialogue, in order to support legislators in their endeavours
to institute a moratorium on executions and abolish the death
penalty and to involve the opponents of abolition in an informed
debate.
The Council of Europe's position on the fight against terrorism
was formulated during an urgent debate at a September 2001 part-session.
It asserts that action against terrorism must not undermine human
rights. This approach was also expressed in a recent statement
issued by Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,
Walter Schwimmer, Secretary-General of the Council of Europe,
and Ambassador Gerard Stoudmann, Director of the OSCE's Office
for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. The joint statement
runs: "While we recognize that the threat of terrorism requires
specific measures, we call on all governments to refrain from
any excessive steps which would violate fundamental freedoms and
undermine legitimate dissent. "In pursuing the objective
of eradication terrorism, it is essential that states strictly
adhere to their international obligations to uphold human rights
and fundamental freedoms". Responding to recent worrying
developments in some countries, the three international human
rights representatives urged all states to ensure that any measures
restricting human rights in response to terrorism strike a fair
balance between legitimate national security concerns and fundamental
freedoms that is fully consistent with international law commitments.
Some rights may not be derogated from under any circumstances.
These include the right to life, freedom of thought, conscience
and religion, freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment, and the principles of precision and non-retroactivity
of criminal law except where a later law imposes a lighter penalty.
For other rights, any derogation is only permitted in the special
circumstances defined in international human rights law. The position
of the Council of Europe is that the purpose of anti-terrorist
measures is to protect human rights and democracy and not undermine
these fundamental values of our societies.
Certainly, in some countries strong measures - particularly those
which limit the human rights of certain parties - are welcomed
by most of the population, as they make people feel more secure
and as citizens trust and confide in their government and special
services. But such confidence may not be the case for every country.
I would not be honest if I did not mention some of challenges
and problems facing the Council of Europe and its Parliamentary
Assembly. I would like to present the problems from my viewpoint
as a Russian liberal. I regret to say for instance that in some
cases, particularly concerning my country, I was slightly disappointed
about the rather weak position of the Council of Europe. We have
very serious problems with human rights in Chechnya. We can see
evident state pressure on the freedom of the media, on independent
TV in my country. However, the voice of the Council of Europe
in these cases was not as strong as I would like. I can attribute
such political behaviour to several factors, including the policy
of double standards mentioned yesterday and policy of self interest,
which seems to me to be a very widespread but foolhardy practice.
Another reason is the constitutional structure of the Council
of Europe where the decisions are adopted by the Council of Ministers,
which represents the governments and executives and the lack of
PACE's powers to force the Council of Ministers to react. Consequently
a number of politicians doubt the future of the Council of Europe.
But I think that the Council of Europe has a political future
owing to its high values and its experience: this experience may
be interesting and useful for you, dear colleagues, who represent
different Asian countries and different approaches to human rights.
Thank you for your attention.
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