MOSCOW, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Russian lawmakers approved a long-stalled reform of the European Court of Human Rights on Jan. 15, giving a boost to an institution that has frequently critisied Moscow's own record.
The lower house of parliament, the Duma, voted 392 to 56 to ratify changes that the court hopes will streamline and speed up the way it processes cases. Russia has for years been the only one of the 47 members to hold up the changes, agreed in 2004.
The Council of Europe, the pan-European human rights watchdog under which the court operates, welcomed the vote as a sign of Moscow’s commitment to Europe and internal legal reform.
Council Secretary-General Thorbjorn Jagland said it was a significant decision that would help clear a backlog of cases at the Strasbourg-based court.
"During our recent meeting in Moscow, President (Dmitry) Medvedev assured me that Russian membership in the Council of Europe is key to his efforts to modernise Russia’s judicial system," he said in a statement.
"Today’s approval of the ratification will clearly help this reform… By joining the other 46 member states, Russia is sending a strong signal of its commitment to Europe."
To complete the process the upper house of parliament and Medvedev must still endorse the protocol, but they are widely expected to give the green light.
CRITICISED HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD
Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Denisov told deputies that passing the changes would significantly help improve Russia’s human rights record, which is sharply criticised by rights activists both at home and abroad.
Denisov said 112,000 complaints were currently before the court, including 27,000 from Russia. The Court only considers a fraction of cases that it rules fall under its jurisdiction.
Seen as a last shot at justice, the European court is becoming increasingly popular in Russia, which had the largest number of accepted cases in 2008 at 8,161.
Once cases are accepted, those who lodge them have to prove the state played a role in the matter, after which the Court issues a judgement to the country, or an order to investigate.
The court has often censured Russia’s human rights record, with a large number of cases linked to the Islamist insurgency in the volatile North Caucasus region, which Medvedev has called Moscow’s biggest domestic political problem.
Some human rights activists said ratifying the reform was no big deal since Medvedev has avoided signing a separate protocol to abolish the peacetime application of the death penalty.
Russia, the only country not to have ratified that protocol, has a moratorium on the death penalty, though it is not formally forbidden by domestic law.
