Human Rights Court nomination based 'on competence not gender'

While honoured at being the first woman nominated to serve on the European Court of Human Rights, Madam Justice Abigail Lofaro feels this is due to her competence and not her gender.

"I'm honoured to have been nominated for this prestigious role... I would not have applied for the post in the first place if I did not believe I was competent," Madam Justice Lofaro said when contacted.

She is among the three judges to be nominated by the government to serve on the ECHR, which has for years been insisting that Malta nominate a female to the post.

The other two judges nominated are Chief Justice Vincent DeGaetano and Mr Justice Joseph Filletti. Madam Justice Lofaro's name replaced that of Mr Justice Joseph D. Camilleri who was on the original list of nominees and has since retired from the Bench.

Since 2006, the government has been trying to persuade the European selection committee to choose one of the three male judges it had been nominating. The government insisted they were the most competent for the role because they served on the Constitutional Court that dealt with human rights. It argued that the fact they were men should not matter.

But the committee wanted that one of the nominees had to be a woman - in the name of gender equality.

Last September, the government caved in to the pressure and issued a fresh call for applications for the post specifying that at least one of the short-listed nominees would have to be a woman.

It received 14 applications, including seven from women, issuing the list of three nominees on Monday.

Madam Justice Lofaro explained that, throughout her legal career, she was never made to feel she had moved on because she was a woman.

Just like the ECHR had stipulated Malta had to nominate a woman, she said, the court had also laid down that one of the nominees must be male. Just like the two male nominees had been selected out of seven male applicants, she had been chosen from the same number of female ones.

She recalled how, when she completed her law degree in 1984, there were six women graduates and 45 men.

Madam Justice Lofaro, who sits in the Civil Court, was appointed a magistrate in 1996 and served until the end of 2006 when she was appointed a judge together with Madam Justice Anna Felice. They made legal history by becoming Malta's first women judges.

The Labour Party expressed satisfaction at the fact that the government had finally nominated a woman to serve on the ECHR.