A Right to Heritage? Lessons from the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

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Sadowski, Mirosław Michał; de Carvalho Costa, Inês and Botelho, Maria Leonor and Christofoletti, Rodrigo, eds. (2026) A Right to Heritage? Lessons from the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In: Heritage and Human Rights. Springer, Cham, Switzerland, pp. 19-42. ISBN 9783032167545 (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-16754-5_2)

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Abstract

Cultural heritage is considered a vital element in the maintenance of peace; however, its relationship with human rights extends far beyond that particular role. Rather, it is one of the many different dimensions in the relationship between heritage and law in general. The recognition of different cultural rights in the 1960s was an important milestone, having become particularly amplified when international law came to acknowledge not only tangible but also intangible heritage in the early 2000s. Then, the focus on the human aspects of the created environments became even more visible, thus bringing the human rights question to the forefront of the debate, as certain cultural practices or built objects, while important for a community, may violate the human rights of others. Despite this fact, the literature has, for the most part, ignored judgements of human rights tribunals, focusing on the intersections of international criminal law and heritage law within the decisions made by the ICTY and the ICC instead. The purpose of this chapter is to critically review and compare the relevant decisions of the ECtHR and IACtHR, looking at the similarities and differences between the two courts’ approaches to the matters of heritage. The chapter is divided into three parts. In the first part, the author focuses on the theoretical aspects of the relationship between heritage and human rights, building on his previous work. The second and third parts of the chapter each focus on the analysis of the two respective conventions concerning the human rights and jurisprudence of the ECtHR and IACtHR with respect to cultural rights and heritage. The concluding part compares the two sets of analysed decisions and, on their basis, ventures to answer the eponymous question regarding the right to heritage.

ORCID iDs

Sadowski, Mirosław Michał ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2048-2073; de Carvalho Costa, Inês, Botelho, Maria Leonor and Christofoletti, Rodrigo
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)