WUNRN
WUNRN – Women’s UN Report Network - was founded on the UN Study on the Status of Women, Freedom of Religion or Belief, and Traditions. This Study is available, translated into the 6 Official UN Languages, at: http://www.wunrn.com/un_study/un_study.htm
"Discrimination and intolerance
against women, supposedly prescribed by religion or tradition, must be
resolutely condemned. To that end, the Special Rapporteur reiterates his
recommendation that a seminar should be held on the status of women from the
standpoint of religion, traditions and human rights, so as not only to identify
manifestations of discrimination and intolerance, and also to formulate
practical recommendations and a plan of action for eradicating such
practices."
The late Mr. Abdelfattah Amor, former Special
Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Author of the UN Study on the
Status of Women, Freedom of Religion or Belief, and Traditions.
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Also Via
Human Rights Without Frontiers
Freedom of Religion and Belief
Debate – House of Lords, UK
- Motion to Take Note
Moved by Lord Alton of
Liverpool
To move that this House takes note of
worldwide violations of Article 18 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and the case for greater priority to be given by the United Kingdom and
the international community to upholding freedom of religion and belief.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB): My Lords, I begin by thanking all noble
Lords who take part in today’s debate. We have a speakers list of great
distinction, underlining the importance of this subject. It is also a debate
that will see the valedictory speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop
of Leicester, who has given such distinguished service to your Lordships’
House. The backdrop to all our speeches is Article 18, one of the 30 articles
of the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. It insists:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of
thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his
religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and
in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice,
worship and observance”.
The declaration’s stated objective was to realise,
“a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations”.
However, with the passage of time, the declaration has acquired a
normative character within general international law. Eleanor Roosevelt, the
formidable chairman of the drafting committee, argued
that freedom of religion was one of the four essential freedoms of mankind. In
her words:
“Religious freedom cannot just mean
Protestant freedom; it must be freedom of all religious people”,
and she rejoiced in having friends from all faiths and all races.
Article 18 emerged from the infamies of the 20th century—from the
Armenian genocide to the defining depredations of Stalin’s gulags and Hitler’s
concentration camps; from the pestilential nature of persecution, demonisation,
scapegoating and hateful prejudice; and, notwithstanding violence associated
with religion, it emerged from ideology, nation and race. It was the bloodiest
century in human history with the loss of 100 million lives.
The four great murderers of the 20th century—Mao, Stalin,
Hitler and Pol Pot—were united by their hatred of religious faith. Seventy
years later, all over the world, from North Korea to Syria, Article 18 is
honoured daily in its breach, evident in new concentration camps, abductions,
rape, imprisonment, persecution, public flogging, mass murder, beheadings and
the mass displacement of millions of people. Not surprisingly, the All-Party
Group on International Freedom of Religion or Belief, in the title of its
influential report, described Article 18 as “an orphaned right”. A Pew Research
Center study begun a decade ago found that of the 185 nations studied,
religious repression was recorded in 151 of them.
Today’s debate, then, is a moment to encourage Governments to reclaim
their patrimony of Article 18; to argue that it be given greater political and
diplomatic priority; to insist on the importance of religious literacy as a
competence; to discuss the crossover between freedom of religion and belief and
a nation’s prosperity and stability; and to reflect on the suffering of those denied
this foundational freedom.
Although Christians are persecuted in every country where there are
violations of Article 18—from Syria and Iraq, to Sudan, Pakistan, Eritrea,
Nigeria, Egypt, Iran, North Korea and many other countries—Muslims, and others,
suffer too, especially in the religious wars raging between Sunnis and Shias,
so reminiscent of 17th-century Europe. But it does not end there. In a village
in Burma, I saw first-hand a mosque that had been set on fire the night before.
Muslim villagers had been driven from a village where for generations they had
lived alongside their Buddhist neighbours. Now Burma proposes to restrict
interfaith marriage and religious conversions. It is, however, a region in
which Christian Solidarity Worldwide and the Foreign and Commonwealth are doing
some excellent work with lawyers and other civil society actors, promoting
Article 18.
Think, too, of those who have no religious belief, such as Raif Badawi,
the Saudi Arabian atheist and blogger sentenced to 1,000 public lashes for
publicly expressing his atheism. That has been condemned by the United Nations
High Commissioner for Human Rights as,
“a form of cruel and inhuman punishment”.
Alexander Aan was imprisoned in Indonesia for
two years after saying he did not believe in God. Noble Lords should recall
that Article 18 is also about the right not to believe.
Later, we will hear from the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of
Canterbury, who recently said that the “most common feature” of
Anglicanism worldwide is that of being persecuted. Twenty-four of the 37
Anglican provinces are in conflict or post-conflict areas. Referring to the 150
Kenyan Christians who were killed on Maundy Thursday, the most reverend Primate
said:
“There have been so many martyrs in the last
year … They are witnesses, unwilling, unjustly, wickedly, and they are martyrs
in both senses of the word”.
We will also hear from my noble friend Lord Sacks, who offered his
prayer on Hanukkah last year for,
“people of all faiths working together for the freedom of all faiths”.
My noble friend’s brilliant critique, Not in God’s Name: Confronting
Religious Violence, is required reading for anyone trying to comprehend
what motivates people to kill Christian students in Kenya, Shia Muslims praying
in a mosque in Kuwait, Pakistani Anglicans celebrating the Eucharist in
Peshawar or British tourists simply holidaying in Tunisia and for anyone trying
to understand the dramatic rise in Christian persecution, the vilification of
Islam in some parts of the world and, in Europe, the troubling reawakening of
anti-Semitism.
My noble friend’s insights into the shared stories of the Abrahamic
faiths—not least the displacement stories of Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau,
Leah and Rachel, and Joseph and his brothers—and how they can be used to
promote mutual respect, coexistence, reconciliation and the healing of history
underline the urgent need for scholars from those faiths to combat the evil
being committed in God’s name and to give emphasis to the ancient texts in a
way which upholds the dignity of difference—the title of another of my noble
friend’s books. If Jews, Muslims and Christians are no longer to see one
another as an existential threat, we urgently need a persuasive new narrative,
which is capable of forestalling the unceasing incitements to hatred which pour
forth from the internet and which capture unformed minds.
It is not just scholars but the media and policymakers who need greater
religious literacy and different priorities. How right the BBC’s courageous
chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet, is when she says:
“If you don’t understand religion—including
the abuse of religion—it’s becoming ever harder to understand our world”.
It is increasingly obvious that liberal democracy simply does not
understand the power of the forces that oppose it or how best to counter them.
At best, the upholding of Article 18 seems to have Cinderella status. During
the Queen’s Speech debate, I cited a reply to Tim Farron MP—for whom this
has been quite a notable day—in which Ministers said that the Foreign Office,
“has one full time Desk Officer wholly dedicated to Freedom of Religion
or Belief”.
“the Head and the Deputy Head of HRDD spend approximately 5% and 20%
respectively of their time on FoRB issues”.
To rectify this, will we prioritise Article
18 in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office business plan and across government
departments? Has the FCO considered convening an international conference on
Article 18—something I have raised with her? Is it an issue we will raise at
the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Malta in November?
In May, the Labour Party gave a welcome manifesto commitment to appoint
a Canadian-style special envoy to promote Article 18. The Foreign Office
resists this, insisting that all our diplomats promote freedom of religion and
belief. But that has not been my experience. On returning to Istanbul from a
visit to a 1,900 year-old Syrian Orthodox community in Tur Abdin, which was
literally under siege, I was told by our UK representative that his role was to
represent Britain’s commercial and security interests and that religious
freedom was a domestic matter in which he did not want to become involved.
Self-evidently, there is a direct connection with our security interests, not
least with millions of displaced refugees and migrants now fleeing religious
persecution.
Paradoxically, if he had studied the empirical research on the crossover
between freedom of religion and belief, and a nation’s stability and prosperity,
he might have come to a very different conclusion. Where Article 18 is trampled
on, the reverse is also true, as a cursory examination of the hobbled economies
of countries such as North Korea and Eritrea immediately reveals. This is not a
marginal concern, as the outstanding briefing material for our debate from many
human rights organisations makes clear.
Last month, the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, and I chaired the launch
of a report by Human Rights Without Frontiers. Among its catalogue of egregious
and serious violations, it says that North Korea, China and Iran had the
highest number of people imprisoned, in their thousands, for their religion or
belief. It highlights Pakistan, where in 2011 two politicians who questioned
the blasphemy laws were shot dead; where Asia Bibi remains imprisoned with four
other Christians and nine non-Christians, facing the death sentence for alleged
blasphemy; and where Shias and Ahmadis have faced ferocious deadly attacks.
When did we last raise these cases and other abuses of Article 18 with
Pakistan, or the use of blasphemy laws in Sudan, where two pastors are
currently on trial, facing charges that carry the death sentence? Have we urged
Sudan to drop the charges against 10 young female Christian students who face up
to 40 lashes because of the clothes they were wearing? What of the Chinese
Christian lawyers arrested this week as part of a major crackdown? Will Article
18 be on the agenda for discussion with China’s President when he visits the
United Kingdom?
I am a trustee of the charity Aid to the Church in Need, and the noble
Baroness the Minister kindly launched its report, Religious Freedom in the
World 2014, which found that religious freedom had deteriorated in almost
half the countries of the world, with sectarian violence at a six-year high,
nowhere more so than in the Middle East, where last week Pope Francis said that
Christians are subject to genocide. In a recorded
message for that launch, His Royal Highness the Princes of Wales condemned “horrendous
and heart-breaking” persecution, and spoke of his anguish at the plight of
Christianity in the Middle East, in the region of its birth, describing events
in Syria and Iraq as an “indescribable tragedy”.
In 1914, Christians made up a quarter of that region’s population. Now
they are less than 5%. Archbishop Bashar Warda of Irbil, during a meeting that
I chaired here in the House, underlined their traumatic, degrading and inhuman
treatment, pleading with the international community to provide protection. Two
weeks ago the same plea was made by a remarkable Yazidi woman who gave evidence
at a meeting organised by the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson. The Yazidi, a
former Iraqi Member of Parliament, told us:
“The Yazidi people are going through mass
murder. The objective is their annihilation. 3000 Yazidi girls are still in
D’aesh hands, suffering rape and abuse. 500 young children have been captured,
being trained as killing machines, to fight their own people. This is a
genocide and the international community should say so”.
This view has been reinforced this week by reports on “Newsnight” and
“Dispatches”. How will we answer that woman? Do we intend to use our voice in
the Security Council on behalf of the Yazidis and Assyrian Christians? Do we
intend to have the perpetrators brought to justice in the ICC? Are we collating
and documenting every instance, from genocide and rape to the abduction of
bishops and priests, to the burning of churches and mosques, to the beheading
of Eritrean Christians and Egyptian Copts by ISIS in Libya? What are we doing
to create safe havens where these minorities might be protected?
In 1933, Franz Werfel published a novel, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh,
based on a true story about the Armenian genocide. His books were burnt by the
Nazis, no doubt to try to erase humanity’s memory, Hitler having famously
asked, “Who now remembers the Armenians?”. The Armenian deportations and
genocide claimed the lives of an estimated 1.5 million Armenian Christians.
Werfel tells the story of several thousand Christians who took refuge on the
mountain of Musa Dagh. The intervention of the French navy led to their
dramatic rescue.
A hundred years later, the Yazidis besieged on Mount Sinjar were saved,
but their lives are still in the balance. Last week the Belgians made it to
Aleppo and brought 200 Yazdis and Christians to safety. For fragile communities
facing a perilous future, such as these, could we not do the same? Are we
re-examining our asylum rules to reflect the lethal threats faced by families
and individuals fleeing their native homelands?
In the longer term, should not the international community have a more
consistent approach to Article 18? We denounce some countries while appeasing
others who directly enable jihad through financial support or the sale of arms.
Western powers are seen as hypocrites when our business interests determine how
offended we are by gross human rights abuses. Take Saudi Arabia as one example.
The challenge is vigorously to promote Article 18 through our
interventions and our aid programmes, unceasingly countering a fundamentalism
that promotes hatred of difference and persecutes those who hold different beliefs. For the future, the three Abrahamic
religions and Governments need to recapture the idealism of Eleanor Roosevelt,
who described the 1948 declaration as,
“the international Magna Carta for all mankind”.
She said that Article 18 freedoms were to be one of the four essential
freedoms of mankind. Who can doubt that this essential freedom needs to be
given far greater emphasis and priority in these troubled times? I beg to move.
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Lord Alton of Liverpool: My Lords, characteristically, the Minister has
given the House a considered, detailed, thoughtful and extremely helpful reply
to this extremely well-informed debate—characteristic itself of the place that
the House of Lords is. That point was made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord
Alderdice. We have heard from people of all faiths and
denominations and none, and all the speeches shed light on the nature of
Article 18. The Minister just said that it is part of the answer to extremism
and I entirely agree. I particularly welcome what she said about the importance
of religious literacy and what she is doing to encourage people to understand
better the forces that are driving on these malign forces in so many parts of
the world today.
The noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, with whom I work on the All-Party
Group on International Religious Freedom or Belief, where she does such a
wonderful job, talked about my “uncanny knack” of coming up in the
ballot—a point also referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Bach. Perhaps I should
try my hand at the National Lottery. More seriously, it makes the point that
the House should have an annual debate on human rights in Government time and I
hope that the Minister will think about providing that so that it will
not be left to the vagaries of the ballot, helpful though it is that we have
been able to have this debate today.
Many noble Lords have given me undeserved generosity in the remarks they
have made, none more so than the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. As we walk in here
each day, most of us probably pass the western wall of Westminster Abbey,
where, among other things, we can see the statute of Archbishop Oscar Romero,
who was murdered in El Salvador. Only a week ago the noble Lord, Lord Avebury,
was honoured in Mr Speaker’s House for all the work he did on behalf of Oscar
Romero. Combined with that, the work he has done for human rights over the past
50 or 60 years really is unparalleled. At the age of 17, when I was interviewed
by a local newspaper, I was asked if I wanted to go into politics. I said, “Not
really, but if ever I did I hope I would be like Eric Lubbock”—as he then
was. If people are looking for a role model, they could do no better than look
at the noble Lord, Lord Avebury.
Fifty years later there are other role models for the rising generation
. I was very struck by the remarks of Malala Yousafzai, whom the Taliban tried
to murder in Pakistan because she rightly insisted on a girl’s right to an
education :
“One child, one teacher, one book and one
pen can change the world”
Malala’s challenge and the fate of the abducted schoolgirls in Nigeria
or those denied an education in Pakistan go to the heart of Article 18. It is
at the heart of what we have been debating today and it is a theme to which we
must persistently return.
It was the most reverend Primate who in his concluding remarks invoked
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Christian theologian who was executed by the Nazis.
Bonhoeffer said:
“We have been silent witnesses of evil
deeds … we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence … intolerable
conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical … What we shall need is
not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians”.
We should not become worn down either, whatever price has to be paid. We
have enormous privileges, opportunities, liberties and freedoms in this place
and we must use them to speak out on behalf of those to whom so much reference
has been made today. The theme of conscience has come up again and again,
whether in the domestic or international context. That, too, goes to the heart
of Article 18. It is about the balance of rights that were referred to in the
debate.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, in his valedictory
address, enjoined and encouraged us to persist in what he called our defence of
freedom of religion and belief. It is a message that we should all take to
heart. We should never cease to use our privileges to speak up in the way that
he has done for so long and so persistently. One noble Lord said that he could
not understand the presence of the Bishops as an established part of your
Lordships’ House. Others have been declaring interests; my Anglican wife is the
daughter of a priest of 60 years’ standing in the Anglican Church, as his
father was for 50 years. There are eight ordained Anglican clergy on my wife’s
side of the family. I sometimes feel that it is a little like a family
business. It seems to me—I know that my wife will want me to say this—that we
are really blessed by the presence of the Bishops in this House, no one more so
than the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester. At the conclusion of
this debate, we all wish him the very best in his retirement.
David Alton
(Lord Alton of Liverpool),
Professor of Citizenship, Liverpool John Moores University,
Independent Crossbench Member of the House of Lords.
www.davidalton.net
altond@parliament.uk