Echoes of Strasbourg in Geneva: The Influence of ECHR Anti-Torture Jurisprudence on the United Nations Human Rights Committee

Abstract

In this article the influence of the European Court of Human Rights’ case-law on the United Nations Human Rights Committee will be analysed. This particular choice of supervisory bodies enables us to trace such potential influence adequately since both the Court and the Committee supervise treaties which mainly concern civil and political rights: the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Both are legally binding elaborations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Many of the rights in the two treaties are, as a consequence, formulated in a similar way. This facilitates a systematic comparison between the case-law of the two supervisory institutions. To map the possible influence of the Court’s jurisprudence on the Committee’s work as precisely and concretely as possible, I will focus on the prohibition of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment.