Stichting Mothers of Srebrenica v. Netherlands -- International Decisions

On June 11, 2013, in Stichting Mothers of Srebrenica, a chamber of the European Court of Human Rights found that the Dutch courts’ grant of immunity to the United Nations in a case brought by and on behalf of relatives of individuals killed by the Army of the Republika Srpska in and around Srebrenica in July 1995 did not run afoul of Articles 6 and 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights (Convention). Those provisions guarantee, respectively and among other things, the right of access to a court and the right to “an effective remedy before a national authority” if any Convention right is violated. Having found that the challenged decisions accorded with Dutch obligations under the Convention, the chamber declared the application before the Court inadmissible as “manifestly ill-founded” and “rejected” it pursuant to Article 35(3)(a) and 4. The chamber’s decision was unanimous