THE latest setback for the Russian Federation at the European Court of Human Rights represents a stiff test of the State’s willingness to comply with international human rights standards. On June 9, the Strasbourg court found that Russia’s failure to prevent or regulate pollution from a privately run steel plant in the city of Cherepovets violated Nadezhda Fadeyeva’s right to respect for her private life and home under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Mrs Fadeyeva and her family live within the “sanitary security zone” around the steel plant, an area where, according to Russian legislation, no one should be living. However, the only outcome of her battle in the Russian courts since 1995 is that she has been placed on a waiting list to be moved.

The court’s judgment is significant on a number of levels. It recognised that for Mrs Fadeyeva this is a continuing problem. It declined her request to order the Russian Government to move her, but it acknowledged that one of the possible solutions would be to move her to a safe area. The judgment is binding as a matter of international law, and so Russia will have to halt the violation of Mrs Fadeyeva’s rights. This will mean helping her to move away or taking steps to prevent the pollution. But the case also has profound implications for others in a similar position (and thousands live within the immediate vicinity of this steel plant).

The court rightly found that Mrs Fadeyeva did not have to prove that the pollution had damaged her health — it was enough for her to establish that it was a serious risk to the health of people living in the area. This she was able to do with the aid of expert evidence from Mark Chernaik, of the US-based Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide.

Mrs Fadeyeva was represented by a legal team from the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre based at London Metropolitan University, with lawyers from the Russian human rights organisation Memorial. The centre, which was set up in 2003, is working on more than 60 European Court of Human Rights cases from Russia and other former Soviet republics.

In February, the centre secured the first successful human rights court judgments concerning gross violations by the Russian Army in Chechnya. In one case, Russia was condemned for “the massive use of indiscriminate weapons” in directing aerial and artillery bombardment, in February 2000, on the village of Katyr-Yurt. In a second case, in October 1999, Russian aircraft attacked a convoy of civilian cars trying to leave Grozny, the Chechen capital, killing residents and Red Cross workers. Twelve missiles were fired, each of which creates several thousand pieces of shrapnel and has an impact radius of more than 300 metres. In the third judgment, the court found that Russian servicemen had killed the applicants’ relatives, whose mutilated bodies were found in Grozny in January 2000.

As in Mrs Fedeyeva’s case, the Chechen decisions must be effectively enforced, which should include investigations into the incidents and the prosecution of those responsible, some of whom are named in the judgments. But to effect real change, there must be other steps, including the rewriting of Russian field manuals, which at present allow, and even encourage, excessive firepower.

How will Russia respond? There have been worrying responses to the Council of Europe to date. In reply to the human rights court’s judgment in Ilascu v Moldova and Russia in July last year, concerning unlawful detention, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that there was “bewilderment in Moscow at the inconsistency, contradictoriness, subjectivity and clear political engagement” of the court. The Russian Government also tried to get the hearing of the Chechen cases in Strasbourg postponed and to have the press and the public excluded. A further worrying development is that the Government has started recently to issue blanket refusals in response to requests from the court for disclosure of the domestic case files relating to alleged gross violations in Chechnya. Most seriously, civilians in Chechnya who are seeking redress from the court are being intimidated by the security forces. In some cases, those with cases pending in Strasbourg have been killed.

These indications of Russia’s apparent unwillingness to co-operate with the court suggest that matters are coming to a head. The Council of Europe may have to consider stronger measures to bring Russia into line. Certainly the extent to which these judgments can be enforced is a significant test not only for the Russian Government, but also for the Council of Europe. It can only be hoped that Mrs Fadeyeva, and others like her, will not have to wait too long for an answer.

The author is director of the European Human Rights Advocacy Centre (www.londonmet.ac.uk/ehrac)

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