Cultural expertise and international human rights law

Abstract

This chapter explains the procedural requirements for providing cultural expertise and appointing cultural experts and discusses the differences in utilising cultural expertise in the two main regional human rights courts: the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. It does this by engaging in two case studies: the European Court of Human Rights and the headscarf ban; and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and Indigenous rights. The chapter helps the readers to understand how and in which context cultural expertise is invoked in international human rights law, how cultural expertise is presented in different regional courts for the protection of human rights and what has been the role of cultural experts in human rights litigation in selected case studies. The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is a regional human rights treaty adopted in 1950 by the members of the Council of Europe.