16 Jan Sexual discrimination due to the to the prohibition of male prisoners from attending funerals

The European Court of Human Rights held that there had been a violation of Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) in conjunction with Article 8 (right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights in the case of Ēcis v. Latvia (application no. 12879/09).

The case concerned a male prison inmate who complained that he had not been allowed to attend his father’s funeral under a law regulating prison regimes which discriminated in favour of women.

The Court accepted the Government argument in part that treating men and women differently in prison was justified by the fact that female prisoners had distinctive needs, particularly when it came to maternity. Nevertheless, any measures still had to be proportional.

The Court found that men and women who had committed a serious crime and had received the same sentence were treated differently. Men were automatically placed in the highest security category and held in closed prisons, while women went to less restrictive partly closed prisons. The law meant that the applicant had been automatically banned from attending the funeral, while a woman would have had such a possibility.

The Court concluded that while some differences in treatment could be justified, a blanket ban on males leaving prison, even to attend a funeral, did not help the goal of meeting the particular needs of female detainees. The refusal to assess applicant’s request to attend the funeral owing to a prison regime which was based on his sex had had no objective and reasonable justification and he had therefore suffered discrimination and a violation of his Convention rights.

Refences from the offical webiste of the European Court of Human Rights