The Evolution of Religious Freedom as a Universal Human Right: Examining the Role of the 1981 United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief

I. INTRODUCTION The 1981 United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief ("1981 Declaration" or "Declaration")1 is one of the most important documents protecting religious freedom in the international setting. When adopted on November 25, 1981, the Declaration was the culmination of about twenty years of work following the United Nations' mandate on December 7, 1962, to draft such a document. Now, some twenty years after the adoption of the Declaration, it is an appropriate time to consider the Declaration, its aims, its successes and failures, its relationship to the evolution of religious freedom as a modern human right, its relationship to other important international instruments on religious freedom, and its future. Additionally, it is appropriate to assess the status of international religious freedom and what still needs to be done to end religious intolerance and discrimination. Although the Declaration offers broad protections for religious freedom, it takes far more than words on paper to make religious freedom a reality for all peoples of the world. Unfortunately, the persecution of minority or disfavored religions remains a serious problem in many parts of the world today. In China, for example, as part of a widening government campaign to force unregistered religious IMAGE FORMULA5 groups to register or face dissolution, many religious leaders have reportedly been detained for lengthy investigation, and in some cases beaten. In Pakistan, "Muslim mobs" have destroyed Christian churches and homes,2 and non-Muslims have received death sentences for comments judged "blasphemous" or "anti-Islamic." In Saudi Arabia, the Sunni government continues to prohibit, under penalty of imprisonment, virtually all non-Muslim religious worship. The German government, beginning in 1997, placed the Church of Scientology under surveillance; thus, the government may intercept the church's mail, tap its phones, and infiltrate its meetings.3 The Islamic Sudanese government continues to wage an aggressive war against residents of the southern part of the country, resulting in the bombing of villages, the enslavement of children, and the torture of worshipers, especially Christians.4 In Burma, the government reportedly did nothing to stop recent rioters from attacking mosques and Muslim-owned shops; furthermore, soldiers ordered Muslims to convert to Buddhism or leave the country. France recently passed a controversial "anti-sect" bill that targets 173 religious minorities as dangerous threats to domestic peace, with special provisions to disband them for specific kinds of unacceptable behavior.5 In Afghanistan in August 2001, the Taliban regime arrested eight persons, including two graduates of Baylor University, for attempting to convert Muslims to Christianity. These missionaries were tried for their crime and, while awaiting the judge's decision, were abandoned in the desert (a release of sorts) by Taliban officials on the run from IMAGE FORMULA7 the capital city of Kabul during the American-led war on terrorism.6 Lastly, in the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court has established low standards of protection for unpopular religious minorities.7 Moving to even more intractable problems, cultures of religious violence fortified by ancient hatred, like that in the Balkans, are found on every continent in countries large and small, industrialized and impoverished. Questions about religious-political stability may be asked about nations as diverse as Ireland, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, the Indonesian country of East Timor, and countless other places where decades, even centuries, of religious persecution have established seemingly insurmountable obstacles to the maintenance of social order. In the twentieth century alone, by some estimates, as many as 170 million human beings were the innocent victims of ethnic cleansing. …