The European Convention on Human Rights, formerly known as the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, was drafted in 1950 by the Council of Europe. This body had been founded on 5 May 1949 by the Treaty of London, the United Kingdom being one of the initial ten signatories. The Council pre-dated the European Union and remains a completely separate entity. It is a purely an intergovernmental and consultative body with no power to bind individual member states, of which there are now forty-seven. These include serial human rights offenders such as Russia, but not Belarus or the Vatican. Its purpose is to promote cooperation in the areas of the rule of law, the enforcement of human rights, and the preservation or development of democracy. The Convention was the first offspring of the Council.

In the light of the manifest and terrible abuses of human rights in the Second World War, the Convention was intended to prevent any recurrence of such evils. By the time of its drafting, however, it was also seen to be a bulwark against the insidious growth of Communism in Eastern Europe, and ‘a beacon to the peoples behind the iron curtain’, thus explaining the many references to values and principles that are ‘necessary in a democratic society’, and the refusal of the Soviet Union to join the Council of Europe or apply the Convention.

Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe was appointed chairman of the legal and administrative committee that drafted the Convention. He wanted to get international sanction behind the maintenance of the democratic freedoms and rights that the British had taken for granted for generations, what he called the ‘basic decencies of life’.