Thebault & Rose, “What kind of Christianity?”
Abstract: This comment explores how legal authorities understand religious identity and sets these understandings in a wider context. The comment questions whether the interpretation of the claimant’s conversion to Christianity by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Swiss Asylum authorities might not be too restricted to a particular Western European form of Christianity. The European Convention on Human Rights gives to the contracting States a certain margin of appreciation in assessing the risk of ill treatment undergone by a convert. In this case in its application of the Convention the ECtHR accepted the ruling of the Swiss authorities.