The result is uneven protection of physical integrity that sits uneasily with the absolute character of Article 3 and the Court's recognition of a positive duty to protect vulnerable people from foreseeable harm.
The European Convention on Human Rights is generally understood to rest on a single, unified conception of physical harm, applied consistently regardless of context. This paper tests that assumption by examining how the European Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the European Union, and European legislatures have treated four physically invasive practices affecting non-consenting minors or animals: child marriage, female genital mutilation, non-therapeutic male circumcision, and non-stun ritual slaughter. Child marriage is being phased out across Europe as a safeguarding harm. FGM is criminalised as a violation of bodily integrity with no accepted justification. Non-therapeutic circumcision of male minors remains lawful across the Council of Europe where performed with parental consent. Non-stun ritual slaughter has had a more complex trajectory: long accommodated under Article 9, it was restricted by domestic bans that the ECtHR upheld in 2024. The paper argues that these outcomes reflect three different operative conceptions of harm in the Court's case law: biological suffering, structural vulnerability, and irreversible status change. The result is uneven protection of physical integrity that sits uneasily with the absolute character of Article 3 and the Court's recognition of a positive duty to protect vulnerable people from foreseeable harm. The paper does not evaluate the cultural or religious validity of any practice; it assesses the internal consistency of the Court's legal reasoning and proposes a more principled framework.