Welcome to Europe’s Human Rights Watchdog

This bilingual website aims to make the Council of Europe and its work known to a wider public. The articles originate in both an academic and a professional involvement with Europe’s oldest and largest intergovernmental human rights organisation, nicknamed Europe’s human rights watchdog.

The website’s content is continuously updated, endorsed and expanded in accordance with the conviction that «knowledge is the only thing that multiplies when you share it.» (Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach 1830 -1916)

COE IN BRIEF

Purpose:  Promoting Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law

Entity:  Intergovernmental Organisation

Founding year:  1949

Member states:  46

Based in:  Strassburg/France

Working languages:  EN, FR

Secretary General: Alain Berset

Decision-making body:  Committee of Ministers (=Foreign ministers of the member states)

Consultative bodies:  Parliamentary Assembly; Congress of Local and Regional Authorities; Conference of INGOs; Commissioner for Human Rights

Main legal instrument:  European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)

Legal basis:  European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) plus more than 200 Conventions, Additional Protocols and Partial Agreements

Ordinary annual budget: € 418mio
(of which Court: € 90mio)

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