Is the U.N. Maneuvering to Curb Religion?

“ONCE upon a time,” observed England’s Manchester Guardian, “the United States and others saw the United Nations as the champion of human rights and impartial defender of general faiths.” For many years people admired the U.N.’s famous Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a model for freedom. But now, says the Guardian, “disillusionment” has set in. Why the change?

Well, some accuse the U.N. Commission on Human Rights of behaving contrary to its intended purpose. For example, when the American representative returned from the commission’s 1976 session in Geneva, he was indignant over what had happened there. In a public protest on April 1, he made some startling accusations.

First, he charged, a proposed declaration on religious freedom “is slowly taking shape as a twisted text designed to limit religious freedom and individual belief on the pretext that religion breeds intolerance, racism, and colonialism, causing threats to peace and . . . state security.”

The delegate, Leonard Garment, asserted that the declaration as now worded “can serve to undermine the legitimacy of religious organizations and religious practices, and may indeed be used to legitimize their repression.”

Second, he attacked another resolution recently adopted at the 1976 session on the “right to life.” This resolution’s true import, he charged, is that “if the State determines in some manner that it is not ‘secure’, or . . . that there is a ‘threat to peace’, then it can now, with the formal endorsement of the UN Human Rights Commission, suspend all other human rights​—speech, religious exercise, assembly, emigration—​until the threat to the supreme ‘right to life’ passes.”

Hence, Mr. Garment complained, this resolution “permits human rights crimes to be committed openly, even proudly, in the name of peace and international security.”​—Press release, United States Mission to the United Nations, April 1, 1976. (Italics added.)

Those are some strong charges. Will future events bear out Mr. Garment’s fears, or are these U.N. resolutions only empty political puffery that have no real force? Only time will tell for sure, but some of the events leading up to the leveling of these accusations may surprise you. You may be just as surprised to learn how religion is faring at the U.N.

The U.N. and Religion

Back in 1962 the General Assembly formally requested the Commission on Human Rights to prepare a declaration against religious intolerance. At the same time, it requested a declaration against racial discrimination. Just one year later, in 1963, the completed race declaration was proclaimed. But, strangely, after almost fifteen years, only the title and eight paragraphs in the preamble to the declaration on religion have been approved. Why is this?

During the 1973 debate, the Costa Rican delegate voiced his opinion that “an effort was being made in the [preparation] Committee to ensure that the Declaration never saw the light of day.” He thought that the work was being hampered by “all kinds of subterfuge.”¹a

Yet, during those years of delay the emerging declaration was slowly taking a surprising turn. Official records of the debates indicate that many countries are evidently steering clear of a document giving religion complete freedom. A declaration that plainly outlawed all restrictions on religion might be diplomatically embarrassing to them.

To avoid this, their delegates have used many procedural objections and postponements, as well as contesting almost every word of the proposed declaration. This wearing-down process has often extracted compromises in wording that can be interpreted more than one way. Such compromises, says the U.S. delegate, are each “seemingly so minor that one can always justify not putting up a defense​—just yet.”

In the next article we will note how these recent U.N. documents are being rechanneled from statements championing certain rights, into pronouncements that could even be used to curb those rights.

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