“Freedom of Religion or Belief” is Dead

Pasquale Annicchino is a senior assistant professor of law at the University of Foggia (Italy). He is a member of the OSCE/ODIHR Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief.

 How many times have we used the phrase “freedom of religion or belief”? Could it be that we have been mistaken in employing that phrase all along? The rapid pace of technological change might necessitate a reevaluation, bringing us back to the original phrasing in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “freedom of thought, conscience and religion.”

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Freedom of Religion or Belief and the Rights of LGBT+ Persons in Accordance with the Gospel of the UN Independent Expert on SOGI Rights

Thiago Alves Pinto is Director of Studies in Theology and Religion and a department lecturer in Legal Studies in the Department for Continuing Studies, University of Oxford.

On 7 June 2023, the Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity (hereinafter Independent Expert) published his highly anticipated/feared report on freedom of religion or belief, and freedom from violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It is safe to say that, given the subject, the report will not please everyone, but like most international decisions on the topic (including Eweida and Others v. The United Kingdom, Bayev and Other v. Russia, and Pavez Pavez v. Chile), the report is legally sound and in line with international human rights law standards. Unfortunately, the topic itself is considered by many as inherently “controversial,” an attitude that naturally impoverishes rational discussion on the subject. Still, while the legal arguments presented by the Independent Expert are not controversial, entrenched ideologies try to keep this debate at a stalemate.

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Human Rights for Everyone, Everywhere: The Report of the Independent Expert on Protection Against Violence and Discrimination Based on Sexuality and Gender

Christine M. Venter is a teaching professor at Notre Dame Law School and affiliated faculty in Gender Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Among the fundamental core concepts underpinning human rights is the concept that they are indivisible and interdependent. This precept is sorely tested when proponents of religious liberty and LGBTQ+ rights respectively assert that their group’s rights trump the rights of other groups. At a conference last year in Rome, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito asserted that “[r]eligious liberty is under attack in many places because it is dangerous to those who want to hold complete power.” Alito is not alone in his assessment; headlines abound about the threats to religious liberty,whether by the Chinese government in its persecution of Uyghurs, India’s attacks on Muslims, or acts of vandalism against Catholic Churches. The belief that religious liberty is under threat, coupled with incidents like the leak of the Dobbs decision, has created an atmosphere of fear and mistrust. Alito went on to speculate that religiously motivated attacks “probably grow out of something dark and deep in the human DNA—the tendency to distrust and dislike people who are not like ourselves.”

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