The right to respect of home and enjoyment of property for Cypriot IDPs: The developing jurisprudence of the ECtHR

Abstract

The European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR” or “Court”) has applied Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 and Article 8 in the context of internal displacement and has further developed its case law to safeguard and promote the property and home rights of internally displaced persons (“IDPs”). The very first cases concerning the violations of the rights to property and homes of IDPs under the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR” or “Convention”) to be heard in Strasbourg were those concerning the large numbers of Greek Cypriots displaced to the south of the island as a result of the Turkish invasion in the summer of 1974. This chapter seeks to examine the main findings of the Court in these cases, trace their grounding in the Court’s jurisprudence concerning, on the one hand, the requirement for individual applicants to exhaust any effective domestic remedies (Article 35.1) and, on the other, the obligations of member states to implement its judgments under Article 46 of the ECHR. The aim of this chapter is to critically assess which remedies are considered appropriate under the Court’s own jurisprudence for the violations of the Cypriot IDPs’ rights to property and homes as a result of the acts of Turkey in the north of Cyprus. © 2018 Elena Katselli Proukaki.