The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has unanimously declared that Georgia‘s application in the inter-State case Georgia v. Russia is admissible. This case involves the deterioration of human rights along the administrative boundary lines between Georgian-controlled territory and the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
The Georgian government filed the case in the Strasbourg court on August 22, 2018. It is the fourth inter-State application between Georgia and Russia.
The Court has established that it has jurisdiction to handle the case, as the alleged violations of the Convention occurred before September 16, 2022, when Russia ceased to be a Party to the European Convention. The Court has also decided to only examine the allegations of administrative practices and consider the three individual cases as examples of such practices. It has also agreed to not take into consideration any events that occurred before 2009, before the process of “borderization” began.
In response to the Russian Government’s objection that the application was seeking a decision on issues of general international law rather than human rights protection, the Court has stated that the case concerns rights and freedoms defined in the Convention and cannot be rejected solely based on political implications. It has dismissed the objection.
The Court has noted that in a previous case, Georgia v. Russia (II), it had determined that Russia had continued to have “effective control” over the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia until at least May 23, 2018. As there is no new information to contradict this conclusion, the Court has stated that the victims of the alleged violations of the Convention in this case fall under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation.
The Court has reiterated that the rule of exhaustion of domestic remedies does not apply to inter-State cases where the applicant State is complaining about administrative practices or violations of the Convention. In such cases, the Court is not being asked to decide individual violations.
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