UCL Institute for Human Rights and Labour Rights Institute

HIV/AIDS at Work: I.B. v Greece

Speakers

Colm O'Cinneide,
Reader in Law, UCL Faculty of Laws, and Member of the European Committee of Social Rights

Professor Matthew Weait,
Professor of Law & Policy, Birckbeck School of Law

Professor Robert Wintemute,
Professor of Human Rights Law, The Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London

Chair

Dr Virginia Mantouvalou,
Reader in Human Rights and Labour Law, UCL Faculty of Laws

Monday 24 March 2014
Moot Court, UCL Faculty of Laws
1 - 2pm

Abstract

In the first ever case relating to HIV/AIDS discrimination in the workplace, I.B. v. Greece, the European Court of Human Rights held that the dismissal of an HIV-positive worker in response to workforce pressure violated human rights. The applicant was represented by the Co-Directors of the UCL Institute for Human Rights, Dr George Letsas and Dr Virginia Mantouvalou.

The case concerned an employee, I.B., who was dismissed from his job in the private sector, when colleagues found out that he had HIV. They refused to work with him, demanding his dismissal. The employee challenged the dismissal as unlawful. However, the Greek Court of Cassation upheld the dismissal on the ground that it was not motivated by hostility towards his HIV status on the part of the employer, but by the need to ensure the peaceful running of the business. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that the applicant's dismissal violates the European Convention on Human Rights.

This seminar will place the case in its broader context of HIV discrimination and stigma  in the workplace, the law on equality and discrimination, as well as the protection of labour rights in the European Convention on Human Rights.