ECtHR case-law on Domestic Violence and the meaning of Statistical Evidence: the case Landi v. Italy

Violence against women has always been and continues to be a widespread phenomenon throughout the world. Meeting almost entirely the requirements contained in the definition of torture enshrined in the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of 1984, gender-based violence and all the related forms of violence against women have attracted attention at both the international and national levels, with the consequence of the enactment of different instruments at both levels aimed at preventing, combating and punishing proportionally this phenomenon. Starting from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, throughout the years the United Nations introduced in the international arena a variety of declarations or conventions as for example the CEDAW and the DEVAW, but it also opted for recommendations or even organized world conferences for dealing with this matter, at the end of which most of the time several plans of action were approved for the empowerment of women. Moreover, this topic has often been the subject of complaints addressed before the European Court of Human Rights, in which the development of the principle of "due diligence" assumed a central role in confirming whether states where responsible for acts perpetrated by private actors against other individuals. In most of these cases, the positive obligations bearing upon states, mainly deduced from their responsibilities arising under international law and the treaties they signed alongside, was thus the decisive feature for ascertaining the failure of the national authorities in managing claims brought by the victims of domestic violence against their violent partners. In particular, Italy has been involved in two major cases before the ECtHR in the last few years, namely Talpis v. Italy and Landi v. Italy. The former, whose judgment was delivered in 2017, resulted in the condemnation of Italy under articles 2 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights arising from the failure of the national authorities in promptly intervening to mitigate the death of Mrs Talpis’ son, resulting from an escalation of episodes of violence against the woman by her husband. The other case, Landi v. Italy, was pivotal in determining the boundaries for the application of article 14 of the ECHR concerning discrimination. This case actually led to the arrangement of a particular definition of systematic discrimination, according to which the first important source for assessing the violation of this article is constituted by statistical data. In this specific claim brought before the European Court of Human Rights, the Italian authorities were not found guilty of discriminatory behaviours under the Convention as the victim wasn’t able to present sufficient evidence of the existence of a systematize pattern of discrimination against women in Italy from the authorities. The police was undeniably actively involved in this particular case, also transmitting reports to the public prosecutor. The court thus concluded that since no distinction could be made between the behaviours assumed by the police and the passive approach of the prosecutor, an assessment of the violation of article 14 of the Convention itself thus could only be made approaching the case from only one and unique perspective. Thus, bearing in mind the measures adopted by the authority, seen as a whole, the court confirmed no violation of the above-mentioned article.