European Convention on Human Rights

ECHR - Article 2: Life

Article 2 – life

Main article: Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights

In 2019, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands cited the article 2 of the ECHR to say that the government must limit climate change to protect human health.

Article 2 protects the right of every person to their life. The right to life extends only to human beings, not to non-human animals or to "legal persons" such as corporations. In Evans v United Kingdom, the Court ruled that the question of whether the right to life extends to a human embryo fell within a state's margin of appreciation. In Vo v France, the Court declined to extend the right to life to an unborn child, while stating that "it is neither desirable, nor even possible as matters stand, to answer in the abstract the question whether the unborn child is a person for the purposes of Article 2 of the Convention".

The Court has ruled that states have three main duties under Article 2:

1. a duty to refrain from unlawful killing,

2. a duty to investigate suspicious deaths, and

3. in certain circumstances, a positive duty to prevent foreseeable loss of life.

The first paragraph of the article contains an exception for lawful executions, although this exception has largely been superseded by Protocols 6 and 13. Protocol 6 prohibits the imposition of the death penalty in peacetime, while Protocol 13 extends the prohibition to all circumstances. (For more on Protocols 6 and 13, see below).

The second paragraph of Article 2 provides that death resulting from defending oneself or others, arresting a suspect or fugitive, or suppressing riots or insurrections, will not contravene the Article when the use of force involved is "no more than absolutely necessary".

Signatory states to the Convention can only derogate from the rights contained in Article 2 for deaths which result from lawful acts of war.

The European Court of Human Rights did not rule upon the right to life until 1995, when in McCann and Others v United Kingdom it ruled that the exception contained in the second paragraph does not constitute situations when it is permitted to kill, but situations where it is permitted to use force which might result in the deprivation of life.