## Facts

- Nahide Opuz lived with H.O. beginning in 1990, married him in 1995, and had three children.
- From the early years of the relationship, H.O. repeatedly assaulted and threatened Opuz and her mother, including severe beatings, threats with a knife, and an incident in which he ran both women down with a car.
- Medical reports documented injuries to both women; in separate incidents, Opuz and her mother were certified as having sustained life-threatening injuries.
- Opuz and her mother made multiple criminal complaints; H.O. was prosecuted on several occasions for threats and violent offences, including conduct characterized as attempted murder.
- Domestic proceedings frequently resulted in reduced sanctions, conversion of penalties to fines, or suspension of enforcement; some proceedings were terminated after withdrawals of complaints made under pressure.
- Despite repeated notice to law-enforcement and prosecutorial authorities of escalating violence and death threats, effective protective and preventive measures (such as detention, restraining measures, or determined prosecution) were not taken.
- In 2002, following further threats and escalation, H.O. shot and killed Opuz’s mother.

## Issues

1. Whether the State breached its duty to protect life by failing to take preventive operational measures when it knew or should have known of a real and immediate risk to the applicant’s mother from H.O.
2. Whether the State breached the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment by failing to protect the applicant from serious, repeated domestic violence through an effective and diligent law-enforcement response.
3. Whether the authorities’ failure to protect and prosecute reflected discrimination on grounds of sex, in conjunction with the rights to life and freedom from ill-treatment.

## Decision

- The European Court of Human Rights held unanimously that the State violated Article 2 regarding the killing of the applicant’s mother.
- The Court held unanimously that the State violated Article 3 regarding its failure to protect the applicant from domestic violence.
- The Court held unanimously that the State violated Article 14, taken with Articles 2 and 3, because the violence was gender-based and the authorities’ passivity in domestic-violence enforcement operated as discrimination against women.
- The Court awarded the applicant EUR 30,000 in non-pecuniary damages and EUR 6,500 for costs and expenses.

## Legal Principles

- The right to life imposes positive obligations: States must maintain an effective criminal-law framework and, in appropriate circumstances, take reasonable preventive operational measures to protect identified individuals from lethal violence by private actors when authorities knew or should have known of a real and immediate risk.
- For ill-treatment by private actors, State responsibility may arise where authorities, through lack of due diligence, fail in practice to prevent, suppress, and punish serious violence, rendering existing legal protections ineffective.
- In domestic-violence contexts, reliance on victim withdrawal—especially where fear or pressure is evident—does not relieve authorities of the duty to investigate and prosecute serious offences with dissuasive sanctions.
- Systematic or general prosecutorial and judicial passivity toward domestic violence can support a finding that the State’s failures have a discriminatory effect on women, constituting a violation of the non-discrimination guarantee when linked to substantive rights.

## Conclusion

The Court found that repeated, well-documented domestic violence and threats created a real and immediate risk that the authorities failed to address with reasonable protective and prosecutorial measures, resulting in violations of the rights to life and freedom from ill-treatment, and that the pattern of official inaction amounted to sex-based discrimination in domestic-violence enforcement.


Opuz v. Turkey, App. No. 33401/02 (Eur. Ct. H.R. 2009)