On June 16, 2015, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR or the Court) released its judgment in Chiragov and Others v. Armenia, finding that the rights of Azerbaijani refugees had been violated by their inability to return to property in an area under Armenia’s control. The judgment, which centers on a long-standing, “frozen” territorial armed conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, develops the Court’s jurisprudence on extraterritoriality. The intervention of Azerbaijan in the case makes it into a pseudo interstate dispute. Finally, although not the focus of this note, the application of the Pinheiro Principles to adjudicate mass population transfer is praiseworthy for its advancement of the contribution of human rights law to conflict resolution.

The English courts are alive with international cases. In recent years, matters ranging from the interpretation and effect of UN Security Council resolutions to the obligation of the British government to advance cases of diplomatic protection have been determined. These cases have been of fundamental importance from the perspective of both English law and public international law. Belhaj v. Straw is one notable example.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been charged with the task of supervising the application of international conventions for the protection of refugees. This particular task of UNHCR has never been elaborated, neither during the drafting of UNHCR’s Statute, nor at a later date. It is clear, however, that interpretation of the conventions UNHCR has to supervise is an accepted part of its task. Prompted by its Executive Committee in 1977, it first drafted a Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status (Handbook) under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951 Convention) and its accompanying 1967 Protocol in 1979. The inclusion of procedures in the Handbook is particularly interesting since the 1951 Convention, and the 1967 Protocol for that matter, do not regulate the determination of refugee status: “It is therefore left to each Contracting State to establish the procedure that it considers most appropriate.” The Handbook nonetheless comprises procedures for the determination of refugee status based on and induced by the observation that state practice regarding status determination varies considerably; ranging from formal procedures to informal arrangements. It is acknowledged that realizing identical procedures would be unlikely and the Handbook therefore confines itself to laying down certain basic requirements.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), comprised of 324 parliamentarians elected by and from the parliaments of the Council’s 47 member states, first addressed the protection of whistle-blowers in 2010.1 The Assembly overwhelmingly endorsed a report prepared by Pieter Omtzigt (the Netherlands/European People’s Party) on behalf of its Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights. This report broke new ground in that—unlike the situation in the United Kingdom and the United States—the very concept of public-interest whistleblowing was still widely unknown in continental Europe. Populations with histories of authoritarian or even totalitarian rule had little love for those who were widely considered to be “informers,” “snitches,” or the like.2 The PACE report recognized the importance of whistle-blowers, defining them as “concerned individuals who sound an alarm in order to stop wrongdoings that place fellow human beings at risk,” and whose actions “provide an opportunity to strengthen accountability and bolster the fight against corruption and mismanagement, both in the public and private sectors.”3 The PACE recommendation based on this report bore its first fruits in 2014, when the Committee of Ministers (CM), in Recommendation CM/Rec(2014)7, invited member states to improve legal protections for whistle-blowers in line with certain guiding principles.4 This was the first legal instrument in Europe to place whistleblowing squarely within a human rights framework.