Human Rights in
By Marianne Haslev Skånland
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Human rights are a popular topic of conversation in
Why is this?
The hushing up
We Norwegians have a poor understanding of the importance of steady, free
and open flow of information made readily available to the public at large. In
general experience, the sustained publishing of detailed information about
unfair and abusive treatment on the part of the authorities in a country has
shown itself the be an effective means of getting those in power to behave
better towards the population they are to serve. Experience has also shown that
few other remedies work, at least not if not accompanied by making matters
public.
But freedom of speech has no great currency in our country. Propaganda
descending on us from our authorities continually tells us that confidentiality
in sensitive matters is an excellent virtue and the pressure to make citizens
shut up is very great. Two cases brought against Norway at the ECHR have at
least made clear that one is permitted to characterise publicly a doctor's
professional activities in strongly critical terms, and that it is allowed to
quote from official documents even should they reveal irregularities on the
part of our authorities.
That, however, is about as far as we, with the help of the ECHR, have got in
the field of fredom of speech in
Naïvety
The second important factor missing among Norwegians is a sceptical
attitude towards authorities and an understanding of what the concomitants of
power and bureaucratism are. We tend to take for granted that the authorities'
representatives - public servants - automatically dispense welfare and service
to the population; helpless disbelief is what hits us when that is not so.
A citizen who is deprived of his right perhaps tries going to the press, to the
local or national executive bodies, and to politicians, but with scant result.
He then respectfully goes to the courts.
- The City of Bergen is not bound the Human Rights Convention, since it was
signed by Norway, not by Bergen - (stated by a lawyer representing Bergen in a
case in which serveral people who had as children been placed in
"children's homes" in Bergen demanded compensation for what they had
suffered there).
- We cannot go against the police or the public prosecutor in this way - these
people are among our acquaintances - (stated by the defence counsel of an
innocently accused man, when one of the man's witnesses was able to prove that
the police investigator's report of a questioning was untrue).
- If the Supreme Court were to let the risk of liability to pay compensation
decide what freedom our Parliament should have to pass laws, we would be off
the track completely. - (stated by Inge Lorange Backer, a civil servant in the
Ministry of Justice, in an article in the law journal Lov og Rett 10/2003. The
compensation in question was one which the ECHR might award people who could
forseeably complain to
The trusting individual is reduced to hopelessness by these kinds of
preposterous legalism.
The Kurds
The organisation "Kurdish Human Rights Project" (KHRP) takes
cases against
They have as their explicit program to bring out information, in every relevant
forum, about human rights violations against Kurds in the five countries with
large Kurdish populations. One way they accomplish this is by going to the
Court of Human Rights, since
The organisation is independent of Turkish legal bodies and Turkish society, it
is based not in
The early Kurdish cases were often not admitted to the Court. But the Kurds
persevered. The cases kept coming and won through to serious consideration.
Now,
In their cases before the ECHR, the Kurds also try to win acceptance for
statements whose content is something like: Habitual violations of Article 6
have been allowed to develop in
The Kurds have the edge on us. They have never been under the illusion that
they are dealing with a loyal state. They have understood that "We must do
everything ourselves, from scratch."
Norwegian citizens must learn from the Kurds and organise themselves in a
similar manner. The human rights Articles just mentioned, and several more,
must be fought for in order to be respected in
*
The
European Court of Human Rights
The Trip to
Nowhere. Family Policy in the Swedish Welfare State Analysed by Means of
Comparative Law Method Immanent in the European Convention on Human Rights
Av Jacob W. F. Sundberg
Limiting
the rights of Attorneys and denying the right to Counsel. Extract from Lawless
Sweden.
By Eric Brodin
Demand
for compensation for victims of care-orders
By Lennart Hane
Our
judicial system is heading - where ?
By Marianne Haslev Skånland
Child
prisons? In Sweden?
By Siv Westerberg
The
Edner Case
By Ruby Harrold-Claesson
A
Family's Flight From the Welfare State
By Jacob YOUNG with Joan WESTREICH in New York and Donna FOOTE in London
K and T v. Finland. Anu
Suomela's lecture at the NCHR's Symposium in Gothenburg,
June 17, 2000
Human Rights and the Norwegian
Children's Act - a judicial report
Articles