Dr. Seyed Mohammad Sadati Nejad
Diplomat and researcher on peace, humanitarian and human rights law
sadatinejad@yahoo.com
The subject of religion and human right and their relationship is a sensitive, multi-faceted, multi layers and complicated issue. First we should see what are the main questions about this topic.
I have recognized 4 important questions with regard to the subject. The first question is whether religions and human rights are contradictory to each other? I did a survey among diplomats in charge of the human rights issues in Geneva in this regard and out of 10 diplomats who responded to the question, all said no.
The second question is whether human rights have their roots in religions? In the survey, out of 10 diplomats, 6 persons said yes, 1 person said no, 1 person said Abstention, and 1 person said Not sure about it.
The third question is whether religions support the common cause of human rights? As a result of the survey, out of 10 persons, all said yes.
The fourth and last question is whether human rights support religious principles and values? Out of 10 persons, 8 said yes, 1 person said not always, and 1 person said yes and no.
The questions and the responses to them are very telling in the way that they confirm the complexity and sensitivity of the issue of religions and human rights.
To do some brain storming, I would like to touch upon the root causes of human rights. Human rights have been existed since centuries in religious teachings in traditional societies. In modern society, human rights started with John Locke (1632 – 1704) and his social contract and natural rights concepts in 17th century. We all know that the new notion of nation state was the basis for the peace treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and in this line, John Locke was the first person credited with developing a comprehensive theory of human rights. He wrote: People form societies, and societies establish governments, in order to assure the enjoyment of natural rights.
With proposing social contract and natural rights concepts, he tried to separate religion from government, and to guarantee the rights of people against government. It is important to be noticed that the concept of natural rights and human rights which suggested by John Locke, before this, were attributed to divine. It is not correct to say that human rights did not exist before that. What John Locke did, was to adjust the concept with the new developments and changes and the new form of the modern society as a secular model in Europe.
The second topic with relation to religions and human rights, is the issue of rights and limitations. If you look at the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights(ICCPR), we have two articles which are relevant to the topic and important. These are articles 19 and 20. We can say that these two articles are somehow supporting each other and are complementary.
Article 19 refers to the right to freedom of opinion, right to freedom of expression and at the same time, it highlights duties and responsibilities and some restrictions applied to these rights, only for respecting the rights or reputations of others and for protection of national security or public order or public health or public moral.
Article 20 highlights that propaganda for war is prohibited. It also mentions that advocacy of national, racial and religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence prohibited.
Now I would like to refer to the activities within the UN human rights mechanism with regard to the topic of our discussion. Many initiatives have been taken within UN concerning religion by different agencies, but here, we focus only on human rights mechanism.
Within the Human Rights Council, among other issues, there are two specific resolutions regrading religion. The EU resolution on freedom of religion and the OIC resolution on combating intolerance, discrimination and hatred based on religion. Both resolutions are adopted since 2011 by consensus. There have been numerous initiatives such as Rabat Plan of Action (2012), Declaration on Faith for Rights (2017) and Istanbul Process, and developing the faith for rights toolkit by the Council or OHCHR within the human rights mechanism.
Recently with the initiative of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the support of OIC, a joint statement delivered under general debate of item 3 on the role of religions in promotion of human rights, and asked the Council for having a debate on the general concepts of religion and human right.
Reviewing the past initiatives, confirms that the discussion on religion and human right in the Council, has been focused on only two aspects of the issue which is freedom of religion and combating intolerance based on religion. But there are other issues which have not been discussed and there is a need to have a debate between religious and human rights activists about the general concept of religion and human right. Such a debate would reduce the mis understandings, further breach the gaps, and promote human right values and reduce intolerance and hatred based on religion.
There might be a need to a forum on religions and human rights like the four existing forums in the human rights council, including the social forum, the minority forum, democracy and rule of law forum and the forum on business and human rights.
There is a lot of legal texts which defines international standards on human rights. We have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the two Covenants and many other conventions and declarations. The problem is not lack of law and legal documents, most of the problem refers to the practice and implementation of the legal commitments. Individuals, groups, institutions and governments some time, mis-use or abuse human rights for the benefit of their political and other interest. Double standard and selective approached and polarization of human rights are among the main challenges when we discuss the implementation of human rights.
we shall not forget that the two Covenants could have been adopted on 1953 but it adopted two decades later. We could have one Covenant but we have two. Power politics is one aspect of the problems when we talk about respect and implementation of human rights.
We need in the Human Rights Council to address all aspects of religions and human rights, challenges and opportunities, negative and positive impacts, points of agreement as well as point of divergence. The faith and religion for rights shall be discussed, But the rights for faiths and religion should be also discussed. Duties, restrictions and responsibilities which some of them roots in religious teachings and confirmed by the human rights documents should be also discussed. There is an increasing demand in the Human Rights Council to discuss religions and their role in promotion of human rights and the interaction between religion and human right.