THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS: HOPE AND HISTORY, Address by Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to the Oslo Conference on Freedom of Religion or Belief University of Oslo

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14 August 1998, Oslo, Norway



I am grateful for the liberating experience of coming here to Oslo, leaving behind the day to day pressures of practical promotion and protection of human rights, in order to reflect with you on one of the most basic freedoms of all: the freedom of religion and belief. It brings back a happy memory of an afternoon in the Irish Embassy in London in May 1997, when the joint editor of “A World Report on Freedom of Religion and Belief” Kevin Boyle, ran up the stairs to present the report to me breathlessly on the day it was published. “You’ll need this when you take up your new job” he said. And I was careful to pack it when I came to Geneva last September. It is the first study to report on freedom of religion and secular thought in over fifty countries throughout the world, and covers themes such as the relationships between belief groups and the state; freedom to manifest belief in law and in practice; the impact of beliefs on the status of women, and religion and schools. Sadly, it reveals quite starkly the degree to which religious intolerance, conflict and discrimination are a continuing global reality.

So it is fitting, during this special anniversary year, to look back to the vision of fifty years ago.

Human Rights, History and Hope

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights may, like other major documents, assume such a significance in itself that its historical antecedents and cultural biases are ignored or forgotten. For all its fine achievements and continuing potential in the service of a more just and equitable human society, the Declaration has to be understood as the fruit of a long and complex history. Many of its particular provisions - including that of immediate concern to this conference, freedom of religion and belief, - were bitterly disputed and not just in intellectual and parliamentary debate but on the battlefield.

The developing phase in the history of human rights over the last fifty years of interpretation and implementation of the Declaration has opened it up to new perspectives and challenges in cultural conditions much more diverse than its Western roots had offered. Vàclav Havel, in a challenging speech delivered last March in Geneva at a special event to mark the 50th anniversary noted:

‘The emphasis placed in that document on human rights helped to put an end to the bipolar division of the world. It added momentum to the opposition movements in the communist countries who took the accords signed by their governments seriously, and intensified their struggle for the observance of human rights, thus challenging the very essence of totalitarian systems.’

Later he spelt out his personal vision:

‘I am convinced that the deepest roots of that which we now call human rights lie somewhat beyond us, and above us; somewhere deeper than the world of human covenants - in a realm that I would, for simplicity’s sake, describe as metaphysical. Although they may fail to realize this, human beings - the only creatures who are fully aware of their own being and of their mortality, and who perceive their surroundings as a world and have an inner relationship to that world - derive their dignity, as well as their responsibility, from the world as a whole; that is from that in which they see the world’s central theme, its backbone, its order, its direction, its essence, its soul - name it as you will. Christians put it quite simply: man is here in the image of God.

The world has markedly changed in the past fifty years. There are many more of us on this planet now; the colonial system has fallen apart; the bipolar division is gone; globalization is advancing at a dizzying pace. The Euro-American culture that largely moulded the character of our present civilization is no longer the predominant. We are entering an era of multi-culturalism. While the world is now enveloped by one single global civilization, this civilization is based on coexistence of many cultures, religions or spheres of civilization that are equal and equally powerful.’

The values and validity of the Declaration will, one hopes, be deepened and extended by these challenges. It is, after all, a living document written in the present tense and intended to be revisited and enriched by the insights of each generation.

The Declaration is now as much a matter of hope as of history. There is the hope that it will prove equal to the cultural and political challenges. There is above all the hope for a human community that through the fuller realisation of these rights will flourish in the justice, peace and unity of deeper diversity. After another half-century of human rights endeavour it may be that hope and history will more closely rhyme.

The Long contested Right: Freedom of Religion and of Belief

In the difficult historical pursuit of human rights, their articulation and implementation, a critical element has been the close affiliation between religion and ethno-political identity. This was very marked in Europe where it issued in a particularly savage series of ‘religious’ wars, the remnants of which are still with us. But it was not peculiar to Europe or to its major religions. Tolerance and protection of the religiously different has been a rare enough practice in the history of humanity. So Article 18 was one of the crucial articles in the vision represented by the Universal Declaration and it is worth quoting in full:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

The subsequent 1981 UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination based on Religion or Belief spells out in considerable detail the further implications of Article 18 for which the Special Rapporteur has been created and which are being addressed in this conference. For now I wish to stress the contested history forming the background to the cool and classic expression of religious freedom in Article 18. That stress calls attention to how far we have come in this as in other areas. At the same time it sounds a note of warning about how long and how difficult the journey may yet be. The hope of humanity for the flourishing in communion which the ancient Hebrews called shalom lies, at least in part, in the universal and effective implementation of freedom of religion and belief. It may not be presumptuous to add that the hope for religion’s flourishing is also closely associated with the acceptance of this principle.

Person as Foundation; Community as Context

The language of human rights, as the phrase goes, betokens both its personal and social dimensions. A language is at once a social construction and a personal possession. The search for personal freedom and social equity has found its voice, its language in the creative discernment of the freedoms and rights of persons-in-community. Discovery and construction came together in gradual articulation. The basis of this discovery/ construction is the dignity and worth of the individual person, independently of social status or wealth, of personal gifts or achievements. This individual person is also and inescapably a social entity so that the rights and freedoms have social dimensions themselves and encounter inevitable social limitations.

The basis in personal dignity which the Universal Declaration and other UN human rights instruments indicate - and religious bodies such as the Second Vatican Council strongly endorsed - has of course, a certain Western philosophical and even religious tone. Yet its capacity to be translated into very different languages and cultures is undeniable even if much of the work of translation has yet to be carried out. This translation involves cultural dialogue in which the understanding of the role and relationships of the human person may be discovered anew without the threat of final, mutual incomprehension. The post-modern emphasis on particularity, with its critique of the covert and often overt imperialism of Western universals is valuable in alerting Western people and institutions to the parochialism of their own achievements. For this imperialism, to which universal language and institutions are so readily prone, is a parochialism with the power to impoverish or destroy other particulars and their creative potentials. Such imperial tendencies, so often indulged politically and economically, culturally and religiously, are not irresistible.

A basic task for the defenders of human rights and in particular for the defenders of religious liberty is the fostering of the dialogue between cultures and religions. For religions generally the dignity of the human person is intimately related to the awareness and understanding of God in whose image accordingly human beings are created.

Conversation With and Between the Religions

Because the dignity of the human person is for religious people closely influenced by their religious beliefs, the dialogue with religions by people with responsibility for promoting human rights including freedom of religion and belief, is in need of development. The insight of the religions themselves into human dignity and its relation to rights and above all their insight into religious freedom will help to enrich and promote the idea and the ideal of freedom of belief. The conversation between the religious themselves may be even more important. In his promotion of the idea of a global ethic Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Kung has been using almost as a slogan ‘No peace between the nations without peace between the religions’. And the Parliament of Religions meeting in Chicago in 1993 sought to further the cause of genuine dialogue between the religions.

The cause of a global ethic may be interpreted and pursued in many different ways. In whatever way it is interpreted and pursued it has much in common with the promotion of human rights. And given the traditional close connection between religion and morality the conversations with and between the religions must create a sphere of common understanding that will enhance the prospects of global acceptance of human rights and of a shared global approach to many major moral problems. Fruitful conversations between the religions require a freedom and equality which only a whole-hearted acceptance of freedom of religion and belief can guarantee.

For these reasons I was truly honoured last March when, in his speech during the session of the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, the Foreign Minister of Iran invited me to arrange for commentaries from an Islamic perspective or viewpoint on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was an invitation I accepted readily. It has led to a process of close consultation with the Organisation of Islamic Conference and individual countries of the Islamic world with a view to bringing a group of experts in Islamic law together in Geneva during November. It is hoped they will provide the enrichment of their insights into the universality of the rights set out in the Declaration, as well as the “duties to the community” which Article 29 reminds us “everyone has,” and “in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.”

The Gift and Threat of Fundamental Belief

The particular difficulties surrounding freedom of religion and belief and which, for so long, have inhibited inter-religions conversation, no doubt have to do with the very profound issues and attitudes involved in religious belief or unbelief. Confronting questions of the meaning of existence, human and cosmic, of the ultimate source and destiny of human living and loving, the very questions of religion, the stances taken and responses attempted penetrate believer and unbeliever very deeply. In many ways such depth of questioning and response is liberating. Serious believer and unbeliever acquire a sense of proportion in face of the endless and trivializing distractions of the consumerist society.

Contact with the great mysteries of life sets a person free from so many of the minor entrapments. For believers in particular, faith is understood at its best as progressively liberating into aspects of the truth and only the truth sets free. For unbelievers, or, rather, those who accept some alternative fundamental belief to that in a God there is a sense of liberating truth. That is the gift of fundamental belief - liberation in truth. The threat is that of a belief or unbelief which the agent believes he possesses in its fullness and therefore must impose on others. The fundamentalist believer or unbeliever becomes a substitute God. He is at once dominated by his version of belief and seeks to dominate others in turn. This is the domination which occurs in sectarianism, proselytising and the other destructive religious and anti-religious practices which have so often disfigured our world. The call of believer and unbeliever alike is to resist the degeneration of fundamental beliefs from their liberating potential into fundamentalist and dominating caricatures. Only in this way will authentic religious freedom be upheld.

Religious Freedom and Social Privations

Human Rights form a unity. They belong together in a unified protection of humanity. Where other rights are violated freedom of religion and belief will not thrive. So it is clearly with freedom of expression and assembly, and all the other political and civil rights. This is no less true of social and economic rights. Their neglect and violation impinges on the proper exercise of personal rights including freedom of religion or belief.

The major religions while concerned with ultimate questions frequently present themselves as protectors and promoters of human dignity. They see themselves in particular as defenders of the deprived, the poor, the discriminated against. So their religious freedom is a freedom in society not merely to belief and worship but to uphold the cause of the deprived. In these circumstances they must ensure that their own internal practices are not discriminatory on grounds of gender or race or class. They have to learn from the good practice of wider society as well as teach it.

The Republic of Conscience and the Kingdom of God.

In the Jewish and Christian traditions one of the great metaphors for the fulfilment of humanity and the world is that of the Kingdom of God. Translators nowadays tend to prefer terms like the reign or rule of God to avoid the territorial or sexist overtones of ‘Kingdom’. What is really in mind is the presence of God, of the creative, healing, liberating, transforming reality recognized by Jew and Christian as the ultimate mystery. This God is in search of free human response in love to the real mystery also called love and to one another. In that free and loving communion fulfilment is attainable. The freedom essential to loving is freedom to know the truth and to respond to it. It is freedom of conscience. To borrow Seamus Heaney’s phrase only in the Republic of Conscience is the Kingdom of God available. Freedom of religion and belief are basic to that republic and to all humane societies.


At their inauguration, public leaders
must swear to uphold unwritten law and weep
to atone for their presumption to hold office -

and to affirm their faith that all life sprang
from salt in tears the sky-god wept
after he dreamt his solitude was endless.

Seamus Heaney, “From the Republic of Conscience”.