The Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights (JBI) expressed concern today that the most recent draft of a proposed resolution on “Combating Religious Hatred and Vilification of Religions” under consideration at the UN General Assembly, if adopted, would serve as a justification for and even endorse harmful “anti-blasphemy” laws already in force in many States. JBI called on UN Member States to oppose any draft resolution that similarly threatens the rights to freedom of expression and religion.
The unofficial draft resolution, submitted on November 12 by Morocco on behalf of the Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC), an inter-governmental organization consisting of 57 Member States, contains a number of textual changes that differentiate it from the resolutions on “Combating Defamation of Religions,” adopted in past years by the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council. The most significant of these changes is the substitution of the concept of “vilification of religions” in place of the concept of “defamation of religions.”
As JBI has noted in the past, including at an expert discussion convened on October 6, 2010, past resolutions that have been adopted by UN bodies on “defamation of religions” threaten to give rise to very serious negative consequences for human rights. The proposed draft resolution on “vilification of religions” suffers from nearly all of the same shortcomings, and proposes similarly unacceptable restrictions on the fundamental human rights, particularly the right to freedom of expression and freedom of religion or belief.
To see the proposed draft resolution, see here: Download OIC proposal
To see JBI’s analysis of the proposed draft resolution, see here: Download Memo_on_Vilification_of_Religions_Proposal
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