Previous 9 / 25 Next

STAATKUNDIG GEREFORMEERDE PARTIJ v. THE NETHERLANDS DECISION 9 against the rights invoked by the SGP, provided those latter rights were indeed infringed by the finding that the prohibition of discrimination had been breached. 40. As regards Article 9 of the Convention, the Court of Appeal held that this provision did not guarantee an absolute right to freedom of religion. Expressions of religious belief should only be protected when they were a direct expression of that religion. The Court of Appeal found that, in spite of the deeply religious motives underpinning it in this particular case, preventing women from standing for election did not constitute conduct protected by Article 9 of the Convention as such conduct could not be defined as a direct expression of the SGP’s religious beliefs. The Court of Appeal similarly failed to see how the SGP would be hindered in exercising its religious beliefs if it did not, or were forced not to, deny its female members the right to stand for election. Even if compelling the SGP to allow women to stand for election was to be construed as an infringement of its right to freedom of religion, such compulsion would not touch upon the core of that right; that core was the protection of personal religious beliefs and acts closely connected to it, such as acts of worship in the context of generally accepted religious ceremonies. The connection between the core of Article 9 and the practice of excluding women from the right to stand for election was therefore relatively tenuous. 41. As regards Article 11, the SGP had argued that granting the female members of the party the right to stand for election would violate the party’s members’ right, protected by Article 11, to assemble and to organise their party in accordance with their principles and, secondly, to their right freely to choose, without State intervention, who to elect as their representatives. 42. The Court of Appeal agreed with the SGP that forcing the party to allow women to stand for election would conflict with its ideological basic principles and would thus infringe its rights under Article 11. However, there was nothing preventing the SGP from organising itself otherwise and, bar this particular element, wholly in accordance with its basic principles. The Court of Appeal further held that if and when the SGP was forced to allow women to stand for election, nothing precluded it from freely deciding on such issues as composition of lists of candidates standing for elections and what political opinions such candidates should express. Such political opinions, the Court of Appeal held, could also include those not shared by the majority in the Netherlands, namely that women were by definition not suited for any Government office. 43. The Court of Appeal considered that neither the State nor the SGP had substantiated how having to allow female members to be able to stand for elections would infringe the SGP’s rights under Article 10. It reiterated that nothing would preclude the SGP from expressing its opinions about women while allowing women to stand for election.

Select target paragraph3

● ● ●

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

Primary Documents

STAATKUNDIG GEREFORMEERDE PARTIJ v. THE NETHERLANDS.pdf
English
Download View

Election Judgments - IFES

Select target paragraph3

Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij v. the Netherlands

Primary Documents

Notifications