European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms

Abstract

At this time when continued attention is being directed to a review of the Charter of the United Nations, it is suggested that a proper review should include an examination of the indirect as well as the direct consequences of that body's deliberations.This article traces a development that took place both within and without the halls of the United Nations, the most recent event having occurred outside its framework.This article is especially interesting because it may provide an insight into a future role of the United Nations, appropriately to be considered when its Charter is reviewed.]In reviewing the infancy of major social institutions, historians have often been struck by the paradox that what future generations have come to recognize as major stepping stones often pass unnoticed before the eyes of contemporaries.If paradoxes were predictions, a promising future would be assured for the development of an effective system of international guarantees of fundamental human rights.During a period when military and economic measures, such as the Marshall Plan, NATO, Benelux, the Schuman Plan, and the proposed European Army have absorbed the attention of internationalists on both sides of the Atlantic, the Foreign Ministers of fifteen European nations, almost unnoticed, participated in an event which future historians may mark as a major landmark in the ageless struggle to protect the integrity of the individual against arbitrary state interference.Meeting in Rome in November 4, 1950, the ministers, representing member states of the Council of Europe, 1 signed a Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and on September 3, 1953 it went into effect.It took ratifications by ten states to accomplish this' for it was provided that it would come into force after the deposit of ten instruments of ratifications.'The European Convention is unique in