INTRODUCTION

A right to identity for individuals is protected within the European human rights framework on the basis of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). But what does the right to identity amount to? Is it a right for individuals to be themselves and to protect all that is important to their identity, which possibly demands respect for ‘who a person is and to whom or what someone belongs’? Does the right require recognition of an individual’s existence: a right to be recognised as a person (before the law), which demands respect for the fact ‘that someone exists’? Or does the right to identity come down to ‘the right to know one’s biological/genetic origin’, since the right to identity not infrequently comes up in discussions on parentage in the context of adoption, anonymous birth, surrogacy etc. This chapter on the right to identity aims to answer such questions on the basis and meaning of this right as it is given in the case law of the European Court on Human Rights (ECtHR, or the Court). If the right to identity arises in the context of Article 8 ECHR, what are we talking about then? In this chapter it will become clear that: 1) a right to identity is not one and the same as a right to know your origin, and 2) the right to identity in the ECHR does not per se contain the same as rights to identity in other instruments.