Abstract

The right to religious freedom has been approached with different intensity by the European Court of Human Rights and by the protective institutions of the Inter-American System, the Commission and the Court. However, the differences between the two protective spheres of human rights are not only quantitative, because they respond to different historical, political and social realities. Even so, there are also meeting points in the titular and obligated subjects, in the outline of their content and in their limits. The most striking aspect of the European Court is the constant recourse to the margin of national appreciation in the face of the diversity of positions of the member states of the Council of Europe; and, in the Inter-American System, the linking of the right to protection of the most vulnerable, either through the worldview of indigenous peoples, or because of its relationship with the work of many civil society activists with the poorest.