On the 24th of June 2020, the Legal Working Group of the WAVE Network organized a one hour and half webinar focusing on the: ‘Legal arguments used in the Kurt vs. Austria case, pending at the European Court of Human Rights’. The purpose of the webinar was to support legal practitioners on how to use international and European standards such as the ones enshrined in the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (the Istanbul Convention), and in the European Convention on Human Rights, in national and international litigation. The webinar welcomed four speakers, that tackled the pending case at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), Kurt vs. Austria, Application No. 62903/15. The case concerns the murder of the applicant’s son by his father after previous allegations of domestic violence by the applicant against the father.

The webinar was moderated by Lara Dimitrijevic, lawyer and WAVE member representing Network Forum Malta. The webinar started with the intervention of Dr. Sonja Aziz, the lawyer representing Ms. Kurt in front of the Austrian national courts and in front of the European Court of Human Rights. Dr. Aziz presented shortly the principal facts, the legal development of the case at the national and European level and highlighted the most important legal arguments used in the case. It then further continued with the intervention of Rosa Logar, WAVE Board Member/Manager of Vienna Intervention Centre and former GREVIO Member, who talked about the WAVE third party intervention submitted to the ECtHR, focusing on the main arguments regarding the due diligence obligation of the state to proactively protect victims from violence and harm. Elena Biaggioni, lawyer representing DiRe Network in Italy, further highlighted the importance of taking women’s voices to high courts and about the legal arguments used in the third-pary intervention submitted by DiRe in the Kurt case. The webinar concluded with the presentation of Dr. Maria Andriani Kostopoulou, who is a human rights lawyer and member of GREVIO from Greece. In her presentation Dr. Kostopoulou talked about the value and impact of third-party interventions (with a focus on the third-party intervention by monitoring bodies) and with the legal arguments used by GREVIO in its intervention in the case.
The webinar ended with a dynamic Q&A session.

The webinar welcomed 40 participants, from different European countries.

The recording of the Webinar can be found below:

GREVIO’s Third Party Intervention can be found here.

WAVE’s Third Party Intervention can be found here.

DiRe’s Third Party Intervention can be found here.