CASE OF HANAN v. GERMANY (Application no. 4871/16)
22nd June 2021
- Afghanistan, Article 2
- Intervenor
Who were the applicants?
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- In this casebefore the European Court of Human Rights the Court), which concerned aninvestigation into anairstrike in Afghanistan that killed theApplicants two sons. The two Afghan brothers,aged8 and 12,were killed in an air-strike ordered by the German Government on 4 September 2009. It is estimated that between 14 and 142 Afghans died in the strike, of whom 14 to 113 were civilians.
- The significance ofHanan v. Germanyrests on two main questions.The first 1)iswhethertheEuropean Convention on Human Rights (“the Convention) appliestothe armed forces of Member States deployed abroadunder Article 1. For this reason
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Supporting Documents
- were given leave to intervene in the case. The secondquestion2) pertains to Germanys investigation into the airstrike
- RSI argued thatthat the Court shouldapply au201cfunctionalapproachto jurisdiction.This would entail finding that jurisdiction exists for the purposes of the applicability of the Convention whereit is within a states power to perform certain functions that are consistent with their ratification of the Convention u2013 the protectionof human rights
- etc.</li>tt<li>The nature and scope of States duties to investigate violations of the right to life ininternational law. RSI submitted that regardless of the co-application ofinternationalhumanitarianlaw
- and demands the same key hallmarks as found in the Courts jurisprudence.</li>tt<li>The nature and scope of the States duties to provide effective remedies for rights violations generally in international law
- the Court held that the scope of the Convention could be extended in this case to extra-territorial armed conflicts as there was a u201cjurisdictional link requiring Germany to investigate the airstrikes in Afghanistan. The Grand Chamber relied on a u201cspecial features test (<em>Gu00fczelyurtlu v. Cyprus and Turkey</em>) to establish a jurisdictional link. Three u201cspecial features were found here: (1) Germanys obligation under customary international law to investigate the airstrike; (2) the Afghan authorities were prevented