The bars of a cell. A never-ending imprisonment. A depersonalizing barcode. You are a number. At most a profile, a shadow. As end of imprisonment, a date we can't imagine. A day that will never come.

The right to hope cannot be denied. It must be the Life Imprisonment and not the Lifers to have no future.

This is the official website of the research project The Right to Hope. Life Imprisonment in the European Context (553149-EPP-1-2014-ITEPPJMO-MODULE), co-founded by the European Union.

Its purpose is to contribute to the start of a serious and passionate debate over Life Imprisonment. It aims to involve Universities, institutions and civil society.

Have a nice browsing.

Here, immediatly, our conferences with Paulo Pinto, Judge of the European Court of Human Rights:

- "The Human Rights from an European Perspective", Nov. 26, 2015: here | audio-video

- "Life Imprisonment and the European Right to Hope", May 8, 2015: here | audio-video; here in English

Here, immediatly, the last publications of the research:

- books: Ergastolani senza scampo - "Hopeless Lifers" (2016) e I diritti umani in una prospettiva europea - "Human Rights from a European Perspective" (2016)

- paper: Davide Galliani, "The Reducible Life Imprisonment Standard from a WorldWide and European Perspective", in Global Jurist, 1/2016: here

And: 

"Reopen the Question. Death Penalty, Life Imprisonment and Constitutionalism": here

Starting point

Vinter and Others v. The United Kingdom, European Court of Human Right, GC, July 9, 2013

Concurring opinion, Judge Power-Forde:

"However, what tipped the balance for me in voting with the majority was the Court's confirmation, in this judgement, that Article 3 encompasses what might be described as "the right to hope". It goes no further than that. The judgment recognises, implicitly, that hope is an important and constitutive aspect of the human person. Those who commit the most abhorrent and egregious of acts and who inflict untold suffering upon others, nevertheless retain their fundamental humanity and carry within themselves the capacity to change. Long and deserved though their prison sentences may be, they retain the right to hope that, someday, they may have atoned for the wrongs which they have committed. They ought not to be deprived entirely of such hope. To deny them the experience of hope would be to deny a fundamental aspect of their humanity and to do that would be degrading".

For more information, please contact: Questo indirizzo email è protetto dagli spambots. È necessario abilitare JavaScript per vederlo. (scientific coordinator, cv)