Freedom of Religion and Belief for Everyone Everywhere: Lessons Learned and Good Practices

Brett G. Scharffs is Director of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies and Rex E. Lee Chair and Professor of Law at  Brigham Young University Law School. This post is adapted from a presentation made 20 February 2020 in Washington, DC, at the Special Meeting to Share Lessons Learned and Exchange Good Practices to Advance a Regional Dialogue on the Right to Freedom of Thought, Conscience, and Religion or Belief Committee on Juridical and Political Affairs, Permanent Council of the Organization of American States.

The need for “climate change” in human rights discourse

Ján Figeľ, the European Union’s Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion and Belief, speaks often of the need for “climate change” in our human rights discourse. Why is this? Today, our contemporary human rights discourse is more divisive and politicized than it ought to be. In addition, sometimes human rights seem too imperial, as if they are going to solve every problem. At other times, they seem quite fragile and vulnerable, subject to a variety of types of criticism and condemnation. And so, I think it is true that we really do need “climate change” in our human rights discourse. (more…)

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The Chained Wife Problem: Religious and Secular Perspectives

Dmytro Vovk is Director of the Centre for the Rule of Law and Religion Studies, Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and co-editor of Talk About: Law and Religion.

In January 2020, it was reported that a Jewish woman in London launched a private prosecution against her ex-husband who had refused to grant her a religious divorce, called a get. Though they were divorced under civil laws, the absence of a religious divorce chained the wife in her marriage and negatively affected her life in the community, primarily by preventing her from remarrying. The woman and her lawyers claimed that the husband’s behavior should be prosecuted under a 2015 law criminalizing “controlling and coercive behavior” as a form of domestic abuse. The threat of criminal conviction convinced the ex-husband to grant the woman the get, and she later revoked her action as a result. (more…)

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Series on “Chained” Women


Two distinguished scholars, one from Israel and one from the United Kingdom, join us to discuss a landmark case, ‘believed to be the first time the criminal justice system in the UK has been used on behalf of an agunah – a “chained” woman left unable to remarry according to Jewish law because her husband denies her a religious divorce.’*

Evoked in this case are issues not only of Jewish and British law, but of family law, religious autonomy, and women’s rights, with ”wide implications within the Orthodox Jewish community and potentially in other communities, when religious laws are abused . . . .’** (more…)

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