Directorate General
Human Rights and
Rule of Law

Human Rights Directorate
Overview
 
The Human Rights Directorate works to promote and develop human rights and to ensure that they are complied with in the Council of Europe’s member states. Its responsibilities include: developing human rights law and the Council’s policy in the field; supervising the application of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights; and implementing the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (ECPT), the European Social Charter (ESC), the European Code of Social Security and the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine. (more ...)
 

Prevention of Torture and Inhuman
or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

The European Committee
for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) visits places of detention, in order to assess how persons deprived of their liberty are treated. These places include prisons, juvenile detention centres, police stations, holding centres for immigration detainees, psychiatric hospitals.

Execution of
the Court's judgments

Respect of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and, in particular, of the Court's judgments, is a crucial element of the Council of Europe's system for the protection of human rights, rule of law and democracy and, hence, for democratic stability and European unification.

   

Human Rights Policy and Development

Intergovernmental Co-operation
The principal role of the Steering Committee for Human Rights (CDDH), under the auspices of the Committee of Ministers, is to set up standards commonly accepted by the 47 member States with the aim of developing and promoting human rights in Europe and improving the effectiveness of the control mechanism established by the European Convention on Human Rights.

Human Rights Law and Policy
Strengthening and developing human rights through new legal and political instruments, guaranteeing coherence and synergies in the development of human rights law and policy.

 

Bioethics

The Oviedo Convention, signed by most of the European States, together with its Additional Protocols, sets out the fundamental principles applicable in day-to-day medicine as well as those applicable to new technologies in human biology and medicine.

European Social Charter
and European Code of Social Security

European Social Charter
The European Social Charter, the natural complement of the European Convention on Human Rights, guarantees social and economic human rights. It was adopted in 1961 and revised in 1996. The European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR) is the body responsible for monitoring compliance in the states party to the Charter.

European Code of Social Security
The European Code of Social Security and its Protocol, as well as the Revised European Code of Social Security, set standards in the social security field on the basis of minimum harmonisation of the level of social security, providing minimum standards and permitting (or rather encouraging) the contracting parties to exceed these standards.

 
 
See also :

Human Rights Trust Fund (HRTF)
The Fund finances activities that support member states’ efforts in implementing the European Convention on Human Rights ("the Convention”) and other Council of Europe human rights instruments and contributes to strengthening the sustainability of the European Court of Human Rights.

European Programme for Human Rights Education
for Legal Professionals (HELP)
 The HELP Programme supports the Council of Europe member states in implementing the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) at the national level, in accordance with the Committee of Ministers Recommendation (2004) 4, the 2010 Interlaken Declaration and the 2012 Brighton Declaration. This is done by enhancing the capacity of judges, lawyers and prosecutors in all 47 member states to apply the ECHR in their daily work. The HELP website provides free on-line access to materials and tools for professional training on the ECHR. It is open to all interested users. The website is also a platform for distance learning courses and hosts fora to stimulate discussions and debates on human rights issues among legal professionals.