ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the inherent risk of divergence in international human rights law arising due to a plurality of actors, from the international, the regional and the national sphere, which oversees the implementation of international human rights treaties in overlapping geographical areas. Thus, due to the jurisdictional overlap between the individual complaint systems of the HRC and the ECtHR, there are numerous decisions regarding very similar issues, in which a conflicting interpretation and application of international human rights norms was put forward by the ECtHR and the HRC. Many of these decisions regard the right to freedom of religion of so-called new minorities formed by recent migration movements. This chapter puts forward a definition of the concept of new minorities and demonstrates the relevance of further research on the protection of their right to freedom of religion in the case law of the HRC and the ECtHR.
