1 1 European Yearbook on Minority Issues, forthcoming Protecting minority rights through an individual rights mechanism: the Strasbourg Court, and some significant developments to June 2012 Bill Bowring, Birkbeck College, University of London Introduction The European Convention on Human Rights is essentially a document of the Eighteenth Century. With one possible exception 1 it proclaims “first generation”, civil and political rights, and bears a remarkable resemblance to the French Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, and to the revolutionary American Bills of Rights. It protects the rights of individuals, physical and legal, and of groups of individuals; but not of groups as such. Collective rights are the province of the European Social Charter of 1961. In Volume 7 of the European Yearbook for Minority Issues, Leto Cariolou surveyed Developments in the Field of the European Court of Human Rights Concerning the Protection of Minorities, from December 2007 to February 2009. 2 She also noted a number of complaints which had been communicated but not yet adjudicated. This article first of all returns to the origin and context of the European system for the protection of human rights, in order to take stock of the efficacy of that system for the protection of minority rights. Next, I review some of the analytical tools developed by some of the leading scholars in the field. Third, I turn to a closer look at Timishev v Russia 3 , the first case in which the Strasbourg Court applied Article 14 to a Chechen complaint. The article then focuses on some of the landmark judgments since early 2009, under the following headings: Roma and discrimination The landmark judgment in D.H. and Others v. the Czech Republic 4 has been followed in the December 2009 Chamber judgment in Muñoz Díaz v. Spain 5 ; 1 The very oddly phrased Article 2 of Protocol 1 to the ECHR: “No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.” 2 Cariolou, Leto, "Recent Case Law of the European Court of Human Rights Concerning the Protection of Minorities", European Yearbook of Minority Issues, Vol. 7, 2007/8. Leiden: Brill, 2010, pp.513-544; Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1468869 3 Application no. 55762/00 & 55974/00, Judgment of 13 December 2005 4 Application no. 57325/00, Judgment of 13 November 2007