Civilizational Hierarchies and the Notion of ‘Europe’ in the European Convention on Human Rights
Jens T. Theilen
Abstract
When the European Convention on Human Rights was adopted, several states parties were major colonial powers forcefully engaged in retaining that position. This article aims to demonstrate the continued importance of this constellation for European human rights law. Using the convention’s travaux préparatoires as a starting point, it identifies civilizational hierarchies between Europe and other regions as foundational to the European project of human rights. The article then traces how the notion of ‘Europe’ has served as a conduit for these hierarchies to persist in less explicitly racialized form, using two examples: first, that of territorial and extraterritorial applicability and, second, the interpretation of the convention by the European Court of Human Rights based on the margin of appreciation and European consensus. Colonial continuities in the form of civilizational hierarchies, as this article thus aims to show, are not only relevant for specific topics like post-colonial migration but also continue to shape the project of European human rights as a whole.
1 citation
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.16 × 0.4 = 0.06 |
| M · momentum | 0.53 × 0.15 = 0.08 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.