Cyberviolence Against Women Under International Human Rights Law: Buturugă v Romania and Volodina v Russia (No 2)

Abstract

This article analyses the recent judgments of Buturugă v Romania and Volodina v Russia (No 2), the first judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (Court) to recognise cyberviolence against women as a violation of Article 8 of the ECHR in circumstances where the respondent states failed to discharge their positive obligations to prevent, protect from and punish acts of cyberviolence against women. While the Court’s judgments in both cases have much to commend insofar as they expressly recognise cyberviolence against women as a human rights violation, this article posits that the Court’s framing of its analyses in both judgments under Article 8 rather than Article 3 is problematic for several reasons: first, Article 8 is a qualified right that may be subject to lawful interference by states; secondly, the invocation of Article 8 does not adequately capture the gravity of the human rights violation and, more broadly, undermines the significant progress made in establishing violence against women as a violation of the prohibition of torture, in human or degrading treatment or punishment under international law; and thirdly, the recognition of cyberviolence against women as a violation of Article 8 does little to address the recalibrated public/private distinction under international law in the digital era, which has contributed to the prevalence of cyberviolence against women. This article contends that in the future the Court’s analysis of complaints concerning cyberviolence against women would be considerably improved by examining complaints under Article 3 rather than Article 8.