ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses one of the best-known state- sponsored international organizations to control state crime: the European Commission on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights, created by the Council of Europe's European Convention on Human Rights. The institutionalization of human rights protection in Europe can be traced to May 1948 when ten western European countries established the Congress of Europe, a rather loose organization in which areas of common concern could be discussed. The European Convention was the first real collective international agreement giving specific legal content and protection to the individual in relation to one's government as well as establishing the necessary machinery for its supervision and enforcement. Government complaints are not as numerous as individual complaints, but because of their very nature, they receive far greater publicity and media coverage than individual petitions. One of the best known of these governmental complaints was Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands v. Greece filed in September 1967.
