Religious freedom, as Felice Gaer argues in the following article, is guaranteed not only by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but by important components of international law as well.

In recent years, some national governments, most prominently the United States, have taken action to reaffirm the importance of religious freedom. The Clinton administration's efforts in this regard include the establishment of an Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad within the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. A senior coordinator on religious freedom, of ambassadorial rank, soon will be nominated, whose task till be to encourage U.S. government support for religious freedom worldwide as a factor in the policy-making process.

Throughout history, the great religions have stressed respect for the dignity and humanity of each individual. Yet conflicts over religious identity and affiliation have too often spurred acts of intolerance, persecution, violence, militancy and war. The quest to protect religious liberty was buoyed by the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

That remarkable "parent" document of the human rights movement was forged in the years immediately following the Holocaust, after six million Jews, more than a million of whom were not yet in their teens, were killed in Nazi concentration camps and gas chambers. The tragic results of the attempt to annihilate all the Jews and many others as well, were all too fresh, too visible to be ignored. Former U.S. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the Commission on Human Rights, reminded delegates that the people of the world expected immediate action on a Declaration that would outlaw such behavior.

The Universal Declaration refers not only to every person's right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, but affirms repeatedly that discrimination on the grounds of religion is impermissible. Two key aspects of the right are set forth: the right to believe -- an internal aspect of the right -- and the right to manifest that belief -- externally, whether alone or together with others.

The Declaration explicitly affirmed the right to change one's religion. However, this provoked such controversy (particularly among representatives of Islamic states) that it has been modified linguistically in the years since, artfully maintaining reference to everyone's right to "have or adopt" a religion or belief -- thus, to maintain it, alter it, or for that matter, drop it.

Role of the International Covenant

The UN's 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which has the force of an international treaty, makes guaranteeing freedom of thought, conscience or religion legally binding on the signatory states. Reiterating each person's right to manifest belief in four areas -- worship, observance, practice and teaching -- it suggests that these external aspects of the right may be subjected to some limits, but only those "necessary to protect public safety, order, health or morals, or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others."

No limits may be permitted on the right to believe in itself, not even in time of public emergency. Notably, public safety could be a reason to limit certain religious practices, but not the more vague "national security." Thus, efforts were made to ensure that the Covenant's limitations could not be a pretext for a state to suppress manifestations of religion or belief.

Concern over the key role of state-sponsored education in promoting a particular religion or of militant atheistic approaches that were common during the height of the Cold War in the Soviet Union prompted inclusion of a paragraph specifically guaranteeing to parents the right to determine and ensure the religious education of their own children.

For all these limitations and clarifications, the Covenant, like the Declaration, makes no attempt to define what constitutes "religion" or for that matter, "freedom of thought" or "conscience." It took nearly 20 years for the United Nations to forge an agreement on another instrument, the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Religious Intolerance, which clarifies further what comprises the right to freedom of "thought, conscience, religion and belief."

This declaration, adopted in 1981 with a substantial boost from the African states, outlines prohibitions on both state-imposed and private discrimination; freedom to manifest a religion or belief without unwarranted government interference; and the commitment of governments to adopt both legal and educational measures to eliminate religious intolerance.

Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance

With an emphasis since then on implementation of the Declaration, the UN Commission on Human Rights established in 1986 the post of Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance, an individual investigator appointed to look into and report annually to the Commission on Human Rights on incidents of religious intolerance. Two individuals who have held this post have traveled to examine religious intolerance in countries as diverse as the Soviet Union, China, Iran, Pakistan, Germany, India, Sudan, Australia, and most recently, the United States. And their reports have covered a much wider array of states.

The special rapporteur has indicated that the most common kinds of violations connected to religious intolerance are:

• physical attacks (including killings and torture);
  
• limits on proselytizing and possessing religious articles;
  
• closing and destroying places of worship, limiting religious publications and controlling the right to elect one's own religious leaders;
  
• discrimination in education, employment, housing, the right to own property, access to credit and the like;
  
• forced exile and expulsion of local religious believers; and
  
• excessive limitations on freedom of expression and assembly.

Often, public officials are responsible, but quite often it is private individuals or communities of individuals that perpetrate these acts.

The effort to address this topic robustly has not been easy; states have asked the special rapporteur to emphasize dialogue in addition to monitoring violations. For its part, the UN moved slowly and hesitantly in addressing this issue in the Cold War years. Even the dissemination of the 1981 declaration in certain official UN languages was held up; for years, copies were not reproduced or distributed in Russian, Chinese or Arabic.

UN bodies dealing with the human rights of women have pointed to problems when culture or religion are used as an excuse to sanction violence against women or other abusive traditional practices. In numerous forums, including the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, states have repeatedly affirmed that such claims cannot be used to justify those (or any other) human rights violations.

Many extremist religious organizations have established measures to enforce subordination and obedience from women and deny them their rights to equality and liberty. In Afghanistan, Taliban authorities have denied women the right to maintain jobs outside the home and have sanctioned physical beatings -- in the streets and in the home -- as a means of enforcing submission from women.

Recent years have seen efforts by some Asian states to press for recognition of cultural relativism in the application of human rights norms, in part on the basis of religious diversity. Numerous UN bodies, most significantly the World Conference on Human Rights convened in Vienna in 1993, reaffirmed the universality of rights forthrightly. They acknowledged that diversity (religious and cultural) must be borne in mind, but stressed that, nonetheless, the duty of states is to uphold all human rights.

Interconnecton of Abuses

UN special rapporteurs have found that religious intolerance and human rights abuses are commonly manifested in combination with other human rights abuses. The interconnectedness of human rights becomes profoundly apparent when one examines cases of religious intolerance.

Elizabeth Odio Benito of Costa Rica (a special rapporteur, now second vice president of her country) has pointed out that the piety of one religious group or leader can be a mask for other prejudices that have nothing to do with religion. The hostility may reflect historical, cultural or physical factors. Yet the teachings of religion may be twisted and construed to condone the prejudice. The causes of religious persecution are many. They range from ignorance to specific conflicts to an absence of contact and dialogue to the pursuit of power.

Combating religious intolerance requires a broad and diverse arsenal: norms, monitors, public reports, dialogue, functioning courts that can provide accountability and justice for the perpetrators of such acts, and the attentiveness of non-governmental organizations themselves. René Cassin, one of the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, once noted that the inclusion of freedom of religion in that document came about in large measure because of the ideas, talents, and persistence of nongovernmental organizations, particularly religious ones.

To prevent acts of religious intolerance, these and other organizations will have to encourage UN investigators and others to pay more attention to the violations of freedom of religion or belief and persecution of religious practitioners that continue to take place around us in so many places today.

Virtually without exception, the world's major religions have striven to advance the idea of the dignity of the individual, of his or her entitlement to rights that are universal and fundamental.

Bahá'í

Universal benefits derive from the grace of the Divine religions, for they lead their true followers to sincerity of intent, to high purpose, to purity and spotless honor, to surpassing kindness and compassion, to the keeping of their covenants when they have covenanted, to concern for the rights of others, to liberality, to justice in every aspect of life, to humanity and philanthropy, to valor and to unflagging efforts in the service of mankind.

Abdu l-Baha, The Secret of Divine Civilization      

Buddhism

However, life itself is the most precious of all treasures. Even the treasures of the entire universe cannot equal the value of a single human life.

Nichiren, circa 1270 C.E.      

Christianity

As for you, my brothers, you were called to be free. But do not let this freedom become an excuse for letting your physical desires control you. Instead, let love make you serve one another. For the whole Law is summed up in one commandment: Love your neighbor as you love yourself. But if you act like wild animals, hurting and harming each other, then watch out, or you will completely destroy one another.

The Bible, Galatians 5: 13-15      

Hinduism

May the members of our society have similar goals. May our hearts be full of love for each other, and may we be united in one thought. May the individual efforts be put together to achieve our common goal.

Vaidika Mantras, Rigveda, mandal 10, hymn 191, mantra 4      

Islam

You mankind: We [God] have created you from a single pair of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you might get to know and cherish one another and not to despise one another; verily the most honorable of you before God are the most righteous.

The Koran, Sura 49:13      

Judaism

The preservation of a single life is tantamount to preserving a whole world, and the destruction of any person's life is tantamount to destroying a whole world.

The Talmud, Sanhedrin 4:5      

Sikhism

In the dwelling of the womb, there is no ancestry or social status. All have originated from the Seed of God.

Guru Granth Sahib, Sikh Scriptures, p. 353