In a Grand Chamber judgment handed down on Friday 28 April, the European Court of Human Rights definitively confirms its “just satisfaction” jurisdiction in an interstate case between Georgia and the Russian Federation, despite Russia’s exclusion in March 2022 after the start of the war in Ukraine.
“The respondent government’s (Russia’s) failure to cooperate does not constitute an obstacle”, the judgment said.
The case tried in January 2021 concerns victims of the administrative practice of killing civilians in Georgian villages in South Ossetia and in the South Ossetia/Georgia “buffer zone”: victims of arbitrary detention and degrading treatment by South Ossetian forces, victims of torture of prisoners of war by South Ossetian forces, as well as victims of the administrative practice of preventing the return of Georgian nationals to their homes in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
It also covers the lack of investigation of deaths during and after the 2008 war.
The Grand Chamber confirms Russia’s obligation to pay Georgia sums ranging from €640,000 to €115 million (€129,827,500 in total) as non-pecuniary damage for these human rights violations. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)