The Court, based in Strasbourg, was set up as a result of the European Convention on Human Rights, created in 1950. This set out a catalogue of civil and political rights and freedoms. It allows people to lodge complaints against States which have signed up to the Convention for alleged violations of those rights. Although founded in 1950, the Court did not actually come into existence until 1959. It gained its present form as a single European Court of Human Rights when Protocol No. 11 to the ECHR took effect in 1998.
The Court is currently made up of 47 judges, one in principle for every State signed up to the Convention. They are elected by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and serve for six years. Judges sit on the Court as individuals and do not represent their country.
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1. The application concerns the Swedish authorities’ refusal to grant residence permits to a mother and her son, who were in Syria, on the basis of their family ties with another son/brother who had been granted subsidiary protection in Sweden. The applicants complained that the Law on temporary restrictions on the possibility of being granted a residence permit in Sweden (which had entered into force on 20 July 2016 and had remained in force until 19 July 2019) had suspended their right to family reunification in breach of Article 8 of the Convention, and that the difference in treatment, with regard to family reunification, of persons granted refugee status and of persons (such as the second applicant) who had been granted subsidiary protection status, had constituted discrimination contrary to Article 14 of the Convention in conjunction with Article 8.