Kiladze v Georgia
Facts
The applicants’ father was executed in 1937 and their mother was sent to a GULAG (corrective labour camp) in 1938 for alleged crimes against the Soviet regime. Their parents’ flat in Tbilisi and all their belongings were confiscated. The applicants spent two years in an orphanage in Russia in cramped and unsanitary conditions before being able to return to Georgia. In 1956 and 1957 the applicants’ mother and father were rehabilitated.
The applicants were recognised as victims of political repression in 1998. In 2005 they applied to the Georgian domestic courts seeking compensation on the basis of Art. 9 of the Law on the Recognition of Citizens of Georgia as Victims of Political Repressions and Social Security of the Repressed of 11 December 1997 (the 1997 law). Ultimately, the Supreme Court concluded that, as no regulatory act relating to the payment of compensation, as referred to in Art. 9 of the 1997 law, had been adopted, the applicants’ request could not be granted.
Judgment
The Government submitted that the case was inadmissible ratione temporis. The ECtHR responded that the right granted by the 1997 law prior to Georgia’s ratification of Protocol No. 1 was still in effect and the applicants continued to suffer as a result of the Government’s failure to legislate in this regard. The Court dismissed the Government’s objections based on incompatibility ratione materiae as when the domestic proceedings began the applicants possessed, by virtue of the 1997 law, a debt sufficiently established to be payable.
As for the merits, the ECtHR found that it was the Government’s failure to adopt the necessary laws to determine the amount of compensation and the rules for its payment which had restricted the applicants’ effective exercise of the right protected by Art. 1 of Protocol No. 1 (protection of property). Moreover, the ECtHR found that the State had not provided convincing or reasoned arguments to explain its failure, nor had it shown readiness to address the root causes of that failure. It had placed a disproportionate and excessive burden on the applicants that could not be justified by the public interest. Thus, the ECtHR found a violation of Art. 1 of Protocol No. 1. The Court awarded 4,000 EUR to each applicant in moral damages.
Comment
This judgment has significance for thousands of others in a similar position to the applicants as the ECtHR, referring to Art. 46 (execution of judgments), has required Georgia to rapidly introduce the necessary legislative, administrative or budgetary measures to ensure that those people who are entitled to, can benefit from their rights under the 1997 law. If Georgia does this there will be no need for thousands of further ECtHR applications on the same issue.
Kiladze_judgment
(official judgment in French)
Kiladze_judgment ENG
(unofficial English translation)
The above official judgment is taken from the website of the European Court of Human Rights http://www.echr.coe.int/ and can be accessed via HUDOC on the court's website: http://cmiskp.echr.coe.int/tkp197/default.htm
The Court's case-law is also collated in Reports of Judgments and Decisions, published by Carl Heymanns Verlag KG.
