The European Court of Human Rights and the Human Rights Committee: Two Actors with a Common Mission

Protecting human rights worldwide has been a shared endeavour of the regional and international human rights systems for roughly half a century now.As the first regional human rights court, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or Court) convened for its first session in 1959.It took almost two more decades until its UN counterpart, the Human Rights Committee (hrc or Committee) as the treaty body entrusted with the oversight of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (iccpr or Covenant),1 convened for the first time in 1977.While both institutions operate on the basis of different legal instruments, they have repeatedly referred to each other ever since.A closer look to their jurisprudence reveals both convergence and divergence.In the following guest editorial, I will try to explore when and why the two human rights institutions refer to each other, which cases are particularly suitable for such a dialogue, and whether there are limits to mutual references.In a final step, I will ask what this means for the future protection of human rights. ConvergenceAn early case of convergence of the two institutions is the meanwhile settled question of whether there is a right to conscientious objection to military 1