Remedies for moral damage before the European Court of Human Rights: Cyprus v. Turkey case

Remedies for moral damage before the European Court of Human Rights: Cyprus v. Turkey case

Blog Article

This article provides the overview of the Cyprus Milk Powder v.Turkey judgment, a recently decided case before the Grand Chamber of the European Court for Human Rights.This is the first inter-State case which ended with pecuniary judgment for moral damages.

The article begins with the overview of factual and legal issues in the Cyprus v.Turkey case which is followed by contextualizing this judgment within the general legal framework regarding moral damages and remedies available.The second part provides the insight into the case law of the International Court of Justice, European Court for Human Rights and international investment arbitration in order to assess the status of moral damages under general international law.

While all international courts and tribunals recognize moral damage as a cause of action, they seem to respond differently to the issue of remedies.International Court of Justice seems to favour declaratory over pecuniary judgments; European Court of Human Rights tend to award both non-pecuniary and pecuniary remedies for moral damages; international investment tribunals seem to favour pecuniary remedies for moral damages.A separate issue is whether international law permits or rather proscribes punitive damages.

While the ILC finds that general international law does not allow for punitive Candle damages there are different opinions, at least within the ECHR setting, that moral damages are inherently punitive for fault-based conduct of the responsible state.