Dr. Natasha Stamenkovikj offers a comprehensive account of the right to the truth as a right in international law and an element in delivering justice though European governance.

The European Court of Human Rights in the Post-Cold War Era: Universality in Transition examines transitional justice from the perspective of its impact on the universality of human rights, taking the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights as its detailed case study. The problem is twofold: there are questions about differences in human rights standards between transitional and non-transitional situations, and about differences between transitions. The European Court has been a vital part of European democratic consolidation and integration for over half a century, setting meaningful standards and offering legal remedies to the individually repressed, the politically vulnerable, and the socially excluded. After their emancipation from Soviet influence in the 1990s, and with membership of the European Union in mind for many, the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe flocked to the Convention system. The voluminous jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights can now give us some clear information about how an international human rights law regime can interact with transitional justice. The jurisprudence is divided between those cases concerning the human rights implications of explicitly transitional policies (such as lustration), and those that involve impacts upon specific democratic rights during the transition. The book presents a close examination of claims by states that transitional policies and priorities require a level of deference from the Strasbourg institutions. The book proposes that states’ claims for leeway from international human rights supervisory mechanisms during times of transition can be characterised not as arguments for cultural relativism, but for ‘transitional relativism’.

The European Convention on Human Rights was drafted in the wake of World War II. However, the dark shadows of that war have never fully receded from Europe. Armed conflicts have resurged time and again, from Northern Ireland to Cyprus and Turkey, and from the former Yugoslavia to the Caucasus. This book focuses on the margins of conflict - human rights aspects of transitions from peace to armed conflict and vice versa. First, it explores what limits human rights put on European societies which are on the brink of armed conflict. Second, it surveys the consequences of human rights violations committed during the armed conflict by looking at the aftermath of war. The book offers stimulating thought on a broad range of materials, especially procedural issues, such as the territorial scope of the Convention, states of emergency, freedom of expression and conflict escalation, obligations relating to enforced disappearances, interim measures, and pilot judgments. Taken together, they reflect both the potential and limitations of human rights in the run-up to conflicts, as well as their aftermath. *** "In its 50th year the European Court of Human Rights is faced with urgent questions on human rights in transitions to and from armed conflict. This challenging volume is a most timely contribution by a selection of eminent scholars in this field to the old and new dilemmas facing the Court." - Jenny Goldschmidt, Professor of Human Rights Law

The European Convention on Human Rights has been a standard-setting text for transitions to peace and democracy in states throughout Europe. This book analyses the content, role and effects of the jurisprudence of the European Court relating to societies in transition. It features a wide range of transitional challenges, from killings by security forces in Northern Ireland to property restitution in East Central Europe, and from political upheaval in the Balkans to the position of religious minorities and Roma. Has the European Court developed a specific transitional jurisprudence? How do politics affect the ways in which the Court's judgments are implemented? Does the Court's case-law itself become woven into narratives of struggle in transitional societies? This book seeks to answer these questions by highlighting the unique role of Europe's main guardian of human rights, the Court in Strasbourg. It includes a comparison with the Inter-American and African human rights systems.

Explores how the European Court of Human Rights understands 'democracy' and might support more deliberative, participatory and inclusive practices.