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STAATKUNDIG GEREFORMEERDE PARTIJ v. THE NETHERLANDS DECISION 11 equals (they are ‘an equal bi-union within creation’ (een gelijkwaardige tweedeling binnen de schepping) but not the same and that they each have received their own specific, distinct calling and place. In this order, the man is the head of the woman: ‘The man was created first by God. The woman was taken from the man. In this [order], the woman is “subordinate” to the man, who is invested with “responsibility”, but definitely not inferior’ (Article 7 of the Statement of Principles with explanatory report). For that reason government is reserved for the man. This excludes the woman from government, which means that she should not be a member of political organs, whether representative or executive. The consequence of that, in the SGP’s view, is that women do not enjoy the right to stand for election (explanatory report on Article 10 [of the Statement of Principles]. 4.1.2. The SGP as a political party expresses its rejection in practice of women’s right to stand for election by not nominating women as candidates for election to general representative government bodies. The issue in the present case is whether the State should take action against this. 4.1.3. It is no longer an issue that the SGP did not admit women as (ordinary) party members either, as since the change in the bye-laws of 2006 women can be members of the SGP with voting rights in the general assembly and the right to be officeholders within the party. In the view of the SGP, incidentally, one can only become a member of the SGP if one subscribes to its basic principles and aims, including the Statement of Principles, so that all members, including female members, are legally bound to the Statement of Principles and the consequent view that government office and therefore the right to stand for election to general representative organs is not for women. The SGP is considering requiring new members to sign a written statement to the effect that the aspiring member subscribes to the basic principles and aims of the SGP. ... 4.5.1. It follows [from the direct applicability of Article 7 (c) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women] that the State has the duty towards its citizens, based on the provisions mentioned of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, to ensure that political parties do not merely admit women as members, in so far as membership of a party is required for nomination as a candidate, but also to admit them to nomination as candidates itself. Only thus can the State effectively secure to women the right to stand for election as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women demands. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women does not leave the State any margin of appreciation on this point. 4.5.2. The above does not alter the fact that the right of women to equal treatment, as set out in, inter alia, Article 7 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, may in particular cases come into conflict with other equally important basic rights, including freedom of religion and freedom of association, and that these rights must be weighed against each other in order to decide which should prevail. There is no reason to assume, as Clara Wichmann and Others argue, that this balancing exercise has been done already in Article 7 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

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Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij v. the Netherlands

Judgment

Question Presented: Whether religiously affiliated parties can exclude women from running as candidates on the grounds that forcing the party to host women candidates violates its freedom of religious expression, as it believes women are unsuited for public office?

Alleged Acts: The Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij of the Netherlands, a conservative religious party, violated the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women by unfairly preventing women from running for office.

Procedural history: The case initially started in 2005 when a coalition of human rights organizations and pro-women's interest groups sued both parties in the Regional Court of the Hague. The original group of petitions alleged that the Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij (SGP) violated the equal rights of women to stand for election by denying them the right to run in the party, and alleged that the Netherlands violated those same rights by allowing the SGP to submit candidate rolls for Dutch elections with those restrictions in place. The case against the SGP was dismissed for a lack of standing as the Court held that women had the option to run for election in other political parties. However, the High Court ruled that the Netherlands had violated Article 7 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women by subsidizing the SGP and providing it state funds for its election campaigns. The Netherlands appealed this decision to the Court of Appeal of the Hague in December 2007. The State argued that since women could still join other political parties and stand for office in the Netherlands, its financial support of the SGP did not violate the rights of women to stand for office. The Court of Appeal upheld the lower court’s decision requiring the Netherlands to cease funding the SGP until it allowed women to run as candidates, and also reversed the lower court’s decision that held the SGP did not violate the rights of women. Instead, the Court of Appeal held that the SGP’s exclusion of women did violate women’s Article 7 rights. The Court held that while the SGP had a right to run candidates that espoused beliefs associated with the party (e.g., women are unfit for office), it could not prevent women from running as candidates on its electoral ballots. The SGP appealed the Court of Appeal decision to the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, which in 2010 upheld both decisions by the High Court. The Supreme Court found that the SGP violated the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women by excluding women from its candidate lists, and ordered that it must allow women in the party to run as SGP candidates within the Netherlands. Dissatisfied with the Supreme Court’s holding, the SGP appealed the case to the European Court of Human Rights to try and reverse the lower court’s decision.

Summary: Prior to this case, the Netherlands did not require parties standing for national elections to conform to gender quotas and put forward certain percentages or ratios of male and female candidates on their tickets. Thus, during the 2012 Dutch parliamentary elections, the Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij (SGP) submitted candidate lists to the state that did not include any female candidates standing for election. The SGP held that it had the right to exclude women based on its religious beliefs and principles. The SGP described itself as “confessional political party firmly rooted in historical Dutch Reformed Protestantism,” a conservative strain of Christianity. The party’s religious beliefs dictate that women are inherently unsuitable for political office, so the party claimed that their right to freedom of religion protected them from any requirements to allow women to run as candidates. Thus, the party instituted a policy that fully banned women from running for political offices in the Netherlands as members of the SGP. After the SGP submitted its candidate lists to the state, a coalition of human rights and pro-women’s interest groups jointly sued the SGP and the Netherlands in the Regional Court of the Hague over the SGP’s candidate lists and accused both parties of unfairly preventing women from running as candidates. After lengthy proceedings through Dutch national courts, the Supreme Court ultimately required the Netherlands to force the SGP to allow women onto its candidate rolls. Both the SGP and State were dissatisfied with the Supreme Court’s decision. As the Netherlands has a civil law system, courts have the authority to order remedies that neither party sought (in this case, ordering that both the SGP allow female candidates and that the State refrain from funding parties like the SGP until they comply with the Supreme Court’s order). Thus, to challenge the Court’s holding, the SGP sued the State in the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) to determine whether the SGP had a right to exclude women from its candidate lists based on the religious beliefs of its members. The SGP also sought to determine whether the State could provide state funds to parties that violated the Convention, as the Dutch Constitution – in contrast to the Convention – did not forbid the State from doing so. Both parties hoped that the ECtHR would overrule the Supreme Court’s opinion, allow the SGP to submit candidate lists without women, and allow the State to fund the SGP and parties like it.

Conclusion: The ECtHR ultimately ruled that the protections afforded to women by the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women outweighed the concerns for the petitioner’s freedom of religious belief. The Court held that promoting gender and sexual equality within government and democracy overrode concerns for religious liberty when constructing party lists. The SGP was ordered to create balanced candidate lists or it could not stand for election, and the State could not provide state funds to any political party that violated the Convention.

Legal Issue(s)

Gender

Applicable Law(s): The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Articles 7, 9, 11; Constitution of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Articles 1, 4, 6.

Region: Europe and Eurasia

Country: Netherlands

Language of Decision

English

Court: Human Rights Court

Election Type: General

Date of decision: Jul 10, 2012

Geolocation

Latitude: 52.074582533390135

Longitude: 4.324035588651896

: Geolocation

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Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij v. the Netherlands

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