What is the European Court of Human Rights?
Yesterday the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) halted Boris Johnson's plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda with a dramatic last-minute ruling.
The intervention drew both praise and condemnation, with the government vowing that another flight would take place.
But what is the ECtHR? And why was it set up?
The ECtHR is an international court based in Strasbourg, France.
It was established to enforce the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), an international treaty designed to protect human rights and basic freedoms in Europe.
Forty-seven countries signed up to the ECHR, including the bulk of Europe, alongside Russia and Turkey.
Any person who feels that their rights enshrined in the ECHR have been violated by a state can take their case to the court.
If judges at the ECtHR find that someone's rights have been violated it can rule against a state and order them to pay compensation.
The member state may also have to take steps to ensure the same thing does not happen again.
However, the court is not empowered to overrule national decisions or annul national laws.
The ECHR and court were established by the Council of Europe, an international organisation founded after World War II (WW2) to protect human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe.
Both have nothing to do with the European Union (EU), as has mistakenly been claimed by opponents of Tuesday's ruling against the Rwanda deportation.
They are fully independent of states and international institutions.
British lawyers, notably MP Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, played a leading role in drafting and implementing the ECHR, which was signed in 1950.
The contribution of Maxwell-Fyfe, who had been a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, was
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