This book explores new and emerging perspectives in the field of protection of religious rights under international law at an institutional level three decades after the 1981 Declaration. It captures in a systematic fashion the different approaches to religious rights existing in public international law and explores how particular institutional perspectives emerge in the context of these approaches. The book examines, and often challenges, these institutional perspectives and identifies new directions for approaching religious rights through international law by examining existing legal tools ... More

This book explores new and emerging perspectives in the field of protection of religious rights under international law at an institutional level three decades after the 1981 Declaration. It captures in a systematic fashion the different approaches to religious rights existing in public international law and explores how particular institutional perspectives emerge in the context of these approaches. The book examines, and often challenges, these institutional perspectives and identifies new directions for approaching religious rights through international law by examining existing legal tools, their achievements, and their shortcomings, and proposes new legal approaches. A complex conversation about the nature of freedom of religion or belief under international law is taking place and how religious rights are perceived is changing on an institutional level. Some of the changes are shaped by external factors, such as the new prominence of religion in public life and the emergence of diverse and complex jurisprudence at the level of regional protection of human rights (ECHR in particular). Others have developed from internal institutional discourses, often shaped by the reports of the UN Special Rapporteurs, UN institutional debates, and new UN resolutions. The intersection of these internal and external discourses is gradually developing dynamic and diverse perspectives on religious rights under international law which are not always easy to reconcile. These new developments have been evolving rapidly over the past seven years but the international law literature, which focuses primarily on ECHR and domestic human rights jurisprudence, has not caught up with them.