Interview: Nazila Ghanea on Religious Freedom and Gender Equality as Non-Clashing Rights

Nazila Ghanea is the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief. She is also Professor of International Human Rights Law and Director of the MSc in International Human Rights Law at the University of Oxford. Ghanea has acted as a human rights consultant/expert for a number of governments, international organisations, and human rights organisations. She has published extensively on religious freedom, minority rights, and international law. Among her publications are Freedom of Religion or Belief: An International Law Commentary (2016); Religion or Belief, Discrimination and Equality: Britain in Global Contexts (2013); Does God Believe in Human Rights? (2007); and Human Rights, the UN and the Bahá’ís in Iran (2003). Ghanea was interviewed by Elizabeth A. Clark and Dmytro Vovk.

Dmytro Vovk: The freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) and gender equality problematic is very politicized, often in different directions. Some countries use FoRB language to criticize human rights and gender equality as concepts; others focus international efforts on gender equality while deemphasizing FoRB; and yet other countries invest significant recourses in the advancement of gender equality or FoRB abroad while achieving less impressive results on the domestic level. How does this politicization affect international human rights law?

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Yeshiva University v. YU Pride Alliance: Comment by Frederick Mark Gedicks

Yeshiva University, one of the oldest Jewish institutions of higher education in the United States, refused to recognize a student “Pride Alliance” club based on its inconsistency with Torah values. A group of students and alumni has sued the university, demanding official recognition of the club. On 14 September 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to protect the university from a New York trial court order requiring it to recognize the LGBTQ+ club.

BYU Law Professor Frederick Mark Gedicks comments on the main issue of the case, elaborates on the strongest arguments in favor of Yeshiva’s and the club’s positions, and tries to predict how the U.S. Supreme Court would decide this case on merits.

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How to Make Progress on Gender Equality Without Decreasing Religious Freedom: The OSCE Context

Montserrat Gas-Aixendri is a full professor of law and religion at Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain).

The commitment of Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development to “leave no one behind” includes a promise to end discrimination. The road toward effective equality between women and men is not yet complete, and there remain many forms of discrimination that can and must be stamped out. Progress calls for the contributions of all social agents, including religious organizations. Nevertheless, freedom of religion or belief and gender equality sometimes seem to be rights standing in opposition to each other in an artificial antagonism. For some, religious freedom is viewed as an inherent obstacle to the achievement of equality, whereas for others, gender equality is regarded as a threat to the protection of religious values and practices. The resulting tensions are particularly plain to see in the region of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), where several cultures are present and the landscape contains a wide range of cultural and religious diversity.

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