The evolution of international human rights protection systems

Abstract

The European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the Interamerican Convention on Human Rights have created the two more relevant regional systems for the international protection of human rights. Both systems have adopted, along their development, very similar directing lines concerning the substantive content of the rights recognized in their respective instruments, in a process of mutual influences. But, at the same time, both systems maintain their own peculiarities with respect to the procedures before their courts, as well as with respect to the ways to ensure the effectiveness of the judgments of these courts. The present article intends to show which are the common elements in the evolution of both systems, as well as those aspects in which they have adopted diverging perspectives.