Legal Aspects of Application of the Convention on Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: before and after “Bancović”

Abstract

Decision of the European Court of Human Rights on inadmissibility of the Bancovic and others application has given rise to many questions on possibility to apply Convention on protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms to the extraterritorial use of force by the States-parties to the Convention. It is deduced in this article that the abovementioned decision is not based on the previous jurisprudence of the conventional bodies, that interpretation of the scope of the convention ratione loci ignores the purposes and a special nature of the convention, and that the Court does not take into account the case-law of the other international human rights bodies. By making reference to the decisions rendered after 2001 the author proves that the European Court of Human Rights has gradually refused from the arguments used in the Bancovic and others decision.