Jocelyn Y.

López Casarrubias
Global Justice and Human Rights/ Alice Salomon Hochschule
November 12 2019.

“All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated. The
international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the
same footing, and with the same emphasis. While the significance of national and regional
particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in
mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to
promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
Ambiguity on the discourse around the right of religion or belief
The quotation that opens the discussion for this essay comes from the Vienna World
Human Rights Conference held from 14 to 25 June in 1993. It was planned two years
before, right after the end of the Cold War (Fall, 1994). In this context, there was an
international optimism about the future of human rights in the United Nations, and
common wishes to expand the United Nations’ actions (Steiner et. al, 2008: 741),
overall, there was hope for peace. As a result of the Vienna World Conference, the
Vienna Declaration and Program of Action were adopted on June 25, 1993 (Fall
1994; Årsheim, 2018) and as the then Secretary General of the Conference,
Ibrahima Fall, commented, the result was considered a successful consensus
around the notion of universality and the obligations of states (Fall, 1994). Prior to
this moment, there had been a global debate mainly driven among African and Asian
thinkers about the colonizing nature of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
For them, some parts needed modification to take into account different cultural,
religious and historical elements (Autumn, 1994: 10). After a series of debates, and
in order to reach a consensus (Fall, 1994), it was thus agreed to integrate that
although states are obliged to promote and protect all human rights, the meanings
of the particular national and historical particularities must be taken into account,
involving a pluralistic with the universalistic view.
In spite of the States obligations towards human rights, they have not had the
capacity to protect minorities or individuals’ rights within their territories. The current
global context is not encouraging; gaps between the rich and the poor have
increased on individual and national levels. In addition there is a degradation of the
Earth caused mainly by life standards that go beyond what the planet can withstand
(Reich, 2012: 309); there are still wars on religion, territory, resources, and abuses
in different levels, especially towards minorities. This suggests that states have taken
refuge in human rights discourse for their legitimation (at least democratic systems)
while they are keeping up abuses that they have perpetrated over time as
mechanisms to maintain power or control over their populations. The way they have
been perpetuating this is through their use of language (Edelman, 1977), most of the
times full of noise and ambiguities.
An example of the ambiguity behind the discourse and the manipulation of language
being used to restrict rights is the treatment that has been given to the human right
of religion or belief, established in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (1945), because it is limited by the restrictions on the right to freedom of
expression set in Article 19, as Schmidt (2010) notes; "carrying" the right with certain
duties "for respect of the rights or reputation of others" and "for the protection of
national security or of public order, public health or morals" (General Assembly,
1945). Besides this clear contradiction, it can be added that there is no instrument,
specialized program or political entity that takes religion as its main objective
(Årsheim, 2018: 4). “Freedom of religion or belief has become a highly contentious
issue in political jurisprudential, philosophical or ideological controversies”
(Bielefeldt, 2012: 67); as Bielefeldt points out, some Islamic nations have been
especially against universalism on the grounds of religion. As that author notes,
through the use of language, the United Nations has spoken of hostile attitudes such
as “Islamophobia” or “Christianphobia” and “Judeophobia” almost as if they were the
only religions that exist in the world, with a total lack of recognition of other religious
minorities. Through the use of language, some religions are suppressed by not
addressing them at all from some States. In China, for example, an anti-universalist
policy around religious diversity could be the official recognition of five religions,
excluding some important and broad ones, such as the Falung Gong movement.
The problem with this is that pluralism is exercised in such a limited way that it ends
up clashing with the fundamental principle of universality. At the same time, it is the
freedom of religion or belief right that both opens the recognition of diversity and
provides guidance as how to deal with it only if universality is guaranteed (Bielefeldt,
2012), because “universalism endows minorities with the ability to understand and
claim their basic rights ”(Leib, 2011: 49).

In his book: Making Religion and Human Rights in the United Nations, Årsheim
(2018) makes a conceptual analysis behind the binary religious-secular, showing
which classifications of the terms are not neutral since the “secular” is identified with
the "natural reason" and the “religious” as "irrational superstition." This vision has
been the status quo around religion and secularism, and in a certain way it serves
as a tacit argument for the United Nations not to generate instruments for its
discussion. Årsheim identifies that in “religion making” as an analytical strategy to
the subject, there must be different levels of analysis on all the systems of reality
that are interplaying: “global and glocal systems of religion that interact with other
social subsystems that see religion differently” (Årsheim, 2018: 23). To guarantee
the holistic nature of human rights; its universality and interdependence, human
rights authorities must see reality in all its possible forms in an objective way, like
looking at the power relations impeding our wellbeing.
References
Årsheim Helge (2018), Making Religion and Human Rights at the United Nations,
Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
Bielefeldt, Heiner (2012), “Misconceptions of Freedom of Religion or Belief”, Human
Rights Quarterly, 35(1): 33-68.
Edelman, Murray (1977), Political Language. Words That Succeed and Politics That
Fail. London: Academic Press.
Fall, Ibrahima (1994), “The U- word”, The UNESCO Courier: a window open on the
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Leib, Linda (2011) “An Overview of the Characteristics and Controversies of Human
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Reich, K. Helmut (2012) “How could we get to a more Peaceful and Sustainable
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Steiner, Henry; Alston, Philip; Goodman Ryan (2008), International Human Rights in
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UN General Assembly, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 217 (III) A (Paris,
1948), http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ (accessed
November 7, 2019).