PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

How are rights of migrants fulfilled in the so called system of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms? The paper applies the concept of ‘transnationalization of human rights’ to rights of migrants. In XX century human rights have emerged as a principle to transnationalize rights of particular groups of people: a principle to de-couple protection of individuals from the national jurisdiction to jurisdiction of international institutions. The system of the European Convention has become one of those international institutions. Outbreak of conflicts in the Middle East, the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, development of European welfare systems — all these have become the factors to determine the increase in the number of incoming migrants to Europe. In addition to that, the system of the European Convention seemed to transnationalize rights of migrants: to provide supplementary protection. Human rights created a strong incentive for migrants to come to Europe. However, as for rights of migrants, full transnationalization has not been the case. Rights of migrants have mainly remained under national jurisdiction of recipient states in Europe. Three processes in the Convention system have contributed to that: 1) delivering the judgments by the European Court of Human Rights; 2) ‘human rights education’ within the Council of Europe; 3) academic and information research by the Council of Europe Secretariat.