Protecting Human Rights and Religious Freedom
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Our European Center for Law and Justice (ECLJ) based in Strasbourg, France, is actively engaged on the international level on issues of religious freedom and human rights through its recently acquired status as a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations. Accordingly, ECLJ actively participates in the work of the Human Rights Council, the main deliberative human rights body of the United Nations, which meets for about ten weeks each year in Geneva.
One of the main issues that the Human Rights Council examines is the fundamental right to freedom of religion, belief, and conscience. The Council has a Special Rapporteur (currently Asma Jahangir from Pakistan) who is tasked specifically with promoting religious freedom, as well as investigating violations by both governmental and non-governmental actors of this fundamental right.
The Sixth Session of the Human Rights Council meets from September 10-28. Among the areas of interest to the ECLJ are the report of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, the report of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and its discussion of defamation of religion, the defamation of religion resolutions introduced by the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which is a mechanism that is being set up to allow the Council to investigate in detail the human rights situation in each nation on a rotating basis.
The ECLJ submitted a written statement on the Right to Choose Ones Religion and Change Ones Religious Affiliation. This statement is based on a more detailed memo that the ECLJ and ACLJ prepared on the subject which can be read by clicking here. A representative of the ECLJ is scheduled to deliver an oral intervention to the Sixth Session of the Council on this issue.
Four of the reports we have prepared for the Sixth Session of the Human Rights Council are as follows:
- ECLJ submits UPR Report to UN on Religious Freedom in Pakistan
- Religious Freedom and Religious Persecution Issues In Israel and the Palestinian Territories
- ECLJ-ACLJ Report on the International Legal Protection of the Right to Choose Ones Religion and Change Ones Religious Affiliation
- ECLJ Report to the UN on Religious Freedom in India