The Strong and Deep Nexus Between Human Dignity and Religious Freedom

Ján Figeľ is the former European Union commissioner and  special envoy for the promotion of freedom of religion or belief outside the European Union.

Peace is a fruit of justice. The core of justice is based on respect of fundamental human rights. And the foundational principle of human rights is dignity.

Today, the agenda of human rights is hijacked by various groups representing ideologies, violent extremism, or ethical relativism. We also tend to forget or neglect our human duties towards the other and towards society. These actions and inactions inevitably lead to contention and conflict. In order to make our era more peaceful and humane, we must return to the original meaning of key documents and definitions on the subject of human dignity. 

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Decolonizing the Indonesian Penal Code

Dicky Sofjan is a core doctoral faculty in the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS), located in the Graduate School of Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), in Yogyakarta.

Indonesia was colonized by the Netherlands through its first ever powerful multinational corporation trading company called the Dutch East India Company for more than 350 years. Although the colonization was far from complete and comprehensive—as Indonesia is notably the world’s largest archipelagic nation, comprising 17,000 islands and occupying three time zones—the laws of the land at the time were established primarily to serve the interest of the colonial masters and to guarantee their political longevity and worldwide economic empire.

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Portuguese Colonization, Catholic Faith, and the Relativization of Secularism in the Jurisprudence of Brazil’s Supreme Court

Ana Cristina Melo de Pontes Botelho is a research professor at the Center for Comparative Constitutional Studies and a collaborating professor at the University of Brasília.

The Role of Portuguese Catholic Colonization in the Emergence of the Brazilian Nation

With the Portuguese colonization of Brazil, Franciscan priests and members of other religious orders were sent to catechize the indigenous inhabitants of the region. The Portuguese brought with them the culture of the June festivals dedicated to various saints, including Saint John, Saint Peter, and Saint Anthony of Padua, a Portuguese Catholic priest and friar of the Franciscan Order, who died on 13 June 1231.

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