82 Legal Digest of International Fair Trial Rights both necessary and proportionate and did not impair the very essence of rights under Article 6(1) of the ECHR.313 It should be noted that, although national security concerns may ultimately give rise to a state of public emergency, which can in limited circumstances allow a country to temporarily derogate from certain rights, the UN ECOSOC’s Siracusa Principles identify that – even during a state of public emergency – any person charged with a criminal offence must be provided with a public hearing, save where the court orders otherwise on grounds of security, and then only so long as adequate safeguards are in place to prevent abuse.314 One such safeguard might be to allow Trial Monitors to observe the closed hearing. 4.1.5 Exclusion in the interest of the private lives of the parties Where the private lives of the parties so require, the press or the public may be excluded from judicial proceedings. The European Commission on Human Rights has found, for example, that the exclusion of the public from a case involving sexual offences against minors was compatible with the grounds of exclusion under Article 6(1) of the ECHR.315 A fully public hearing, in which the public, witnesses and parties in the proceedings can view and hear each other, might also be restricted where this is necessary to protect a witness (See also 7.1). In Diennet v France, the need to protect professional confidentiality and the private lives of the defendant’s patients was called to justify holding a disciplinary proceeding in camera. However, the European Court of Human Rights found a violation of Article 6 in that the public was excluded because of the automatic prior application of the domestic provisions without a factual assessment of the circumstances of the case. Since the proceedings were to deal only with the “method of consultation by correspondence” adopted by Dr. Diennet, there was no good reason to suppose that either the tangible results of that method in respect of a given patient or any confidences that Dr. Diennet might have picked up in the course of practicing his profession would be mentioned. The European Court also added that if it had become apparent during the hearing that there was a risk of a breach of professional confidentiality or an intrusion on private life, the tribunal could have ordered that the hearing should continue in camera rather that establishing an a priori automatic exclusion of the public for the duration of the entire proceeding.316 In B. and P. v the United Kingdom, the European Court of Human rights examined the decision to exclude the press and the public from a case involving the determination of children’s residence following the parents’ divorce or separation. In such cases, it is essential that the parents and other witnesses feel able to express themselves candidly on highly personal issues without fear of public curiosity 313 Kennedy v the United Kingdom [2010] ECHR 682, paras 184–191. 314 UN ECOSOC, Siracusa Principles on the Limitation and Derogation Provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, UN Doc E/CN.4/1985/4, Annex (1985), para 70(g). 315 X v Austria, (Application 1913/63, Judgment of 30 April 1965) 2 Digest of Strasbourg Case Law 438. 316 Diennet v France [1995] ECHR 28, paras 34–35.