Abstract
This article argues that more and better knowledge about the past and present of the formula ‘freedom of religion or belief’ is likely to result in a stronger consistency between the terminology and the concept, while being conducive to a richer national and international conversation on the protection and promotion of ‘religion or belief’ related rights and freedoms. In the first section (The emergence) the author maps the chronology and context of the emergence of the formula: while confirming the importance of the United Nations, it is emphasized that UN documents were not alone, and were not in isolation. In particular, the importance of the Conference, then Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and of a general international conversation, accelerated by the adoption in 1998 of the US International Religious Freedom Act, is underlined. In the second section (The features) the most significant features of the formula are identified, and it is suggested that those features should be taken as the reasons why in the last two decades the formula has proved successful at the UN and OSCE level, as well as in the context of the European Union, mainly in its external action. In the third section (The EU laboratory) the formula is mapped in the EU context and the EU framework is interpreted as a laboratory where the formula is received, challenged and reinvented in a variety of ways. In the fourth and final session (The translation) ten sets of questions are offered with respect to the linguistic and legal translation of the formula in EU Member States. If addressed, it is held, those questions might considerably improve knowledge on the formula in both its top-down and bottom-up dynamic unfolding, thus empowering scholars and actors engaged with combining the global power of the formula in English and its variations in different languages and cultures.
Highlights
This article argues that more and better knowledge about the past and present of the formula ‘freedom of religion or belief’ is likely to result in a stronger consistency between the terminology and the concept, while being conducive to a richer national and international conversation on the protection and promotion of ‘religion or belief’ related rights and freedoms
The very title of the 2013 EU Guidelines, the European Union acknowledges and endorses the emergence of the expression ‘freedom of religion or belief (FoRB)’ as the most common formula used in the international exchange on the subject
As seemingly indicated in the text of the 2013 EU Guidelines, one might infer that the emergence of the ‘freedom of religion or belief’ formula and the FoRB acronym has no other reason than the need for
Summary
In the opening sentence of its 2013 ‘Guidelines on the promotion and protection of freedom of religion or belief’, the European Union states that ‘the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief’ is ‘more commonly referred to as the right to freedom of religion or belief (FoRB)’.1 Through this statement, and the very title of the 2013 EU Guidelines, the European Union acknowledges and endorses the emergence of the expression ‘freedom of religion or belief (FoRB)’ as the most common formula used in the international exchange on the subject. An increasingly wide and diverse public of scholars and actors to conventionally adopt the same expression for the sake of a better protection and promotion of the relevant rights and freedoms Responding to such a need, the formula presents the double advantage of 1) being close to the terminology used in international human rights documents, where ‘religion’ and ‘belief’ have been regularly employed since 1948, and 2) being shorter, and more practical, than the fourfold reference in official texts to thought, conscience, religion and belief as domains worth of protection through fundamental rights and freedoms. The two assumptions combine in definitions of the formula ‘freedom of religion or belief’ as fundamentally equivalent to ‘religious freedom’, and yet more inclusive because of the additional reference to belief, and more accurate insofar as that addition reflects better the original text and mandate of international human rights documents This approach is becoming very common in Western Europe, and in certain sectors of Anglo-Saxon, and English-speaking advocacy and scholarship. I hold, those questions might considerably improve knowledge on the formula in both its topdown and bottom-up dynamic unfolding, empowering scholars and actors engaged with combining the global ritual power of the formula in English and its variations in different languages and cultures
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