Integrating Cultural Concerns in the Interpretation of Individual Rights. Lessons from the International Human Rights Case-Law

This article proposes to explore the different ways in which cultural concerns can permeate the realm of classical individual rights, so as to enable them to contribute to ensure respect for cultural specificities. Through the analysis of a sample of cases drawn from the jurisprudence of two major international human rights institutions, namely the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations Human Rights Committee, Part I highlights the diverse modalities through which cultural considerations can impact on human rights’ interpretation. As will be discussed in Part II, these observations shed new light on the relation between classical individual rights and minority rights: rather than forming a separate category of rights, it is argued, the latter should be seen as deriving from and extending the former