Boundaries and restrictions of 'The right to life' according to the European Court of Human Rights (Article 2 of ECHR) jurisprudence

• Author: Pjereta Agalliu
• Position: University of Tirana
• Pages: 50-61

Vol. 4 No. 1

March, 2018

Academic Journal of Business, Administration, Law and Social Sciences

IIPCCL Publishing, Graz-Austria

ISSN 2410-3918

Acces online at www.iipccl.org

50

Boundaries and restrictions of “The right to life” according to the European

Court of Human Rights (Article 2 of ECHR) jurisprudence

PhD (C.) Pjereta Agalliu

University of Tirana

Abstract

The f‌i rst substantial right of the European Convention on Human Rights (henceforth referred

to as the Convention) is the right to life, set out in Article 2. This right was the f‌i rst one to be

a ached to this Convention, because human life is more important than any other right. If one

is deprived of the right to life in an arbitrary manner, all other rights are illusionary. Being a

fundamental right, it is protected by a number of national and international 1 instruments and

the most important one, which has made it most relevant in the aspect of legislative theory,

but also as part of the application of the right to life, is the Convention. Based on the European

Court of Human Rights’ (henceforth referred to as the Court) caselaw, we manage to determine

the boundaries and the restrictions of the right to life. This paper includes f‌i ndings which relate

to the concept of the right to life, the protection and guarantees that the Convention o ers,

Article 2 of the Convention in particular, and the criteria for the restrictions applying on the

right to life. The active obligation of the state bears a special importance in this ma er, along

with the def‌i nition of the boundaries and restrictions of the right to life and the boundaries

and restrictions applying to the obligations of the Adhering States to guarantee the protection

of life and their responsibility in those cases recognized by the Convention when this right is

restricted.

Keywords: European Convention on Human Rights, “The right to life”, Court of Human

Rights, strengthening of the right, the boundaries and the restrictions of the right to life.

Introduction

The scope of this paper is to analyze the boundaries of the guarantees o ered by Article

2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Nonetheless, during the course of

this paper, we will o en f‌i nd combinations of guarantees o ered by Article 2 and other

guarantees that the Convention o ers. As established by caselaw, the Convention

needs to be considered as a whole, because the rights included in this instrument do

not act separately from each other. On the contrary, several fundamental concepts and

approaches, such as: the concept of “law”, “proportionality”, “necessity”, “legitimate

scope”, “nonarbitrariness”, “fair balance”, etc., make up the main pillar which guides

the entire structure of the Convention and the rights protected by it. There also exists

a specif‌i c connection between the provisions of the Convention. In this case, the right

to life is specif‌i cally connected to Protocol No. 6 and 13 concerning death penalty

and article 15 of the Convention concerning “death resulting from legitimate acts of

war”, and on the other hand, with Article 3 “Prohibition of torture”, Article 5 “Right

to liberty and security” or Article 8 “Right to respect for private and family life”, etc.

1 Universal Declaration for Human Rights; International Pact on Political and Civil Rights; Euro-

pean Convention on Human Rights; African Charter of Human Rights, etc.