The ECHR Delivered a Decision on “Nikolyan v. Armenia” Case

On October 3 of 2019, the European Court of Human Rights published a decision on the case “Nikolyan v. Armenia”.

The European Court of Human Rights recorded violations of rights to the fair trail, to personal and family life. The ECHR obliged Armenia to pay 7800 Euros to Gurgen Nikolyan as a compensation for the violations of the mentioned rights.

Thus, by the case of the applicant, back on November 13 of 2014, the Protection of Rights without Borders NGO filed a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights raising the issue of violations of the Articles 6 (right to fair trail), Article 8 (right to personal and family life) and Article 13 (right to the effective measure for legal protection) respectively of the Convention.

The applicant was considered dysfunctional after the trail back in 2013. The case of dysfunctionality was initiated by his wife and son, after the case when he filed an application on divorce and the eviction of his wife from house.

During the local judicial examination, the application was not enabled to conduct a proper legal protection, then after being recognized dysfunctional for unlimited time, he was deprived from the right to control his own life according to his discretion.

The applicant applied to the relevant bodies with the request to review the decision on recognizing him as dysfunctional, but the latter was rejected. The rejection was conditioned by the fact, that there is no such mechanism prescribed by the RA legislation and that only the guardian is allowed to raise such an issue. Moreover, despite the court decision on recognizing dysfunctional, the Applicant did not have a guardian for 6 months. After that, the son of the applicant was recognized as his guardian, despite the existence of conflicts among them.

The decision on recognizing the citizen dysfunctional was appealed to the First Instance Court of General Jurisdiction in judicial order, then was appealed to the Court of Cassation. Reaching no result in domestic level, an appeal was filed to the European Court of Human Rights.