Vulnerable groups in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights

ENThis chapter analyses the legal protection available to vulnerable groups and their members under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and in particular the vulnerability paradigm of the European Court of Human Rights. It traces the development of the concept of ‘vulnerable groups’ and its use in the case law of the Court and identifies the main groups of persons systematically considered by the Court as vulnerable. When discussing the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, two groups of cases are covered. First, the chapter identifies key cases with respect to specific vulnerable groups, and secondly the most recent cases are analysed to reveal the latest trends. For this purpose, to establish how often ‘vulnerable groups’ appear on the agenda of the European Court of Human Rights, case law research was performed. The time frame chosen was the last five years starting from 1 January 2016 and ending 31 December 2020. After identification of all the cases, 37 most relevant cases were chosen and scrutinised in more detail. In this way, the chapter seeks to offer the reader a contextual analysis of the notion of vulnerable groups in European human rights law and sets out the framework for further chapters of the book. [From the publication]