Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 135
November 2010
P.F. and E.F. v. the United Kingdom (dec.) - 28326/09
Decision 23.11.2010 [Section IV]
Article 3
Positive obligations
Alleged failure by police to take all reasonably available measures to protect schoolchildren and their parents from sectarian violence: inadmissible
Facts – The first applicant was the mother of the second applicant, who was a pupil at a Catholic primary school situated in Belfast (Northern Ireland). During the autumn of 2001 loyalists staged protests along the route the second applicant (and other pupils) used to get to school. Owing to sectarian tensions in the area, the police believed that there was a risk that violence could erupt in other parts of the city if they were forcibly to end the protest. They therefore decided to exercise restraint. Instead of breaking up the protest, they placed themselves between the protesters and the parents and children walking to school and used their shields to protect them against missiles. The protest lasted more than two months. During this period none of the children were physically injured, but they were subjected to sectarian abuse and intimidation as they walked to school every day. The first applicant brought judicial-review proceedings on behalf of herself and her daughter for a declaration that the authorities had failed to secure the effective implementation of the criminal law and to ensure safe passage for her, her daughter and the other pupils to the school. Her application was dismissed in a decision that was upheld on appeal.
Law – Article 3: The behaviour of the loyalist protesters – which was premeditated, had continued for two months and was designed to cause fear and distress to young children and their parents making their way to school – had reached the minimum level of severity required to fall within the scope of Article 3. The police had possessed more than sufficient foreknowledge of that treatment to trigger their obligation to take preventive action. Accordingly, the primary question for the Court was whether the police could be said to have taken all reasonable steps to prevent ill-treatment.
In answering that question, the Court had to bear in mind the difficulties involved in policing modern societies, the unpredictability of human conduct and the operational choices which had to be made in terms of priorities and resources. The obligation to take “all reasonable steps” had to be interpreted in a way which did not impose an impossible or disproportionate burden on the authorities. It followed that the police had to be afforded a degree of discretion in taking operational decisions. Such decisions were almost always complicated and the police, who had access to information and intelligence not available to the general public, were usually in the best position to make them. This was especially the case in a situation as volatile and unpredictable as the one pertaining in north Belfast during the summer and early autumn of 2001, where riots, sectarian murders and violent disorder had erupted.
In view of that context, the Court accepted that the police had taken all reasonable steps to protect the applicants. First, they had followed a course of action they reasonably believed would end the protest with minimal risk to the children, their parents and the community at large. They had intelligence which suggested that a more direct approach could increase the risk to the parents and children walking to the school, lead to further attacks on Catholic schools and also result in increased violence in north Belfast. It could not, therefore, be said that they had either disregarded the risk to the applicants, or given greater priority to the “unspecified risk of disturbances elsewhere”. Secondly, they had not stood by and done nothing: rather, they had placed themselves as a shield between the protesters and the parents and children at considerable cost to themselves, with forty-one officers being injured during the operation. By contrast, no child had sustained any physical injury during the whole period. Thirdly, requiring the police in Northern Ireland to forcibly end every violent protest would likely place a disproportionate burden on them, especially where such an approach could result in the escalation of violence across the province. In a highly charged community dispute, most courses of action would have inherent dangers and difficulties and it had to be permissible for the police to take all of those dangers and difficulties into consideration before choosing the most appropriate response. Consequently, the applicants had not demonstrated that the authorities had failed do all that could be reasonably expected of them to protect them from ill-treatment.
Conclusion: inadmissible (manifestly ill-founded).
The Court also declared inadmissible as being manifestly ill-founded the applicants’ complaints under Articles 8, 13 and 14 of the Convention.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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