ORAL STATEMENT
Humanists International
Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe
Human Dimension Conference: Plenary on Fundamental Freedoms II
Speaker: Leon Langdon
Thank you, Moderator,
My name is Leon Langdon and I represent Humanists International, the global representative body of humanist and non-religious organizations, with over 110 member organizations in over 60 countries, including over 50 organizations across the OSCE.
Excellencies, Colleagues,
Addressing intolerance against religious and belief communities is of the utmost importance and the work of the OSCE in this regard is vital. The value of focusing specifically on some named communities in certain specific contexts is not to be understated, but it is equally important that focusing on those communities does not cause us to ignore the ways other religious and belief communities are affected.
We also urge states in this vein to refer consistently to religious and belief communities, to avoid compounding the invisibility of smaller communities, including humanists and the non-religious, who also face discrimination and hold the right to freedom of religion or belief.
In this vein, it is important that we cannot protect rights and counter intolerance in silos. The separate tracks on countering different types of hate require coordination, and we wholeheartedly endorse Prof Shaheed’s call for a whole of society approach, as well as coordination between multilateral actors.
Against this backdrop we must also ensure that we engage with rights and communities in an intersectional manner and ensure that the goal of countering hate and protecting religious or belief communities does not lead us to justify discrimination against others.
Our esteemed Introducer, Prof Ahmed Shaheed, during his tenure as Special Rapporteur in 2020 rejected “any claim that religious beliefs can be invoked as a legitimate “justification” for violence or discrimination against women and girls or against people on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity”.[1]
That warning has only grown more urgent. Governments, including in the OSCE, along with non-State actors invoke religion, and even the right to FoRB itself, to undermine reproductive rights and the rights of women, girls and LGBTI+ people. Legitimate protections are recast as discrimination. Abortion buffer zones, for example, are a lawful limit on manifesting belief, protecting the health, privacy and safety of others,[2] as are bans on conversion practices to protect LGBTI+ people.[3]
Calling these protections discrimination devalues the very real discrimination and violence that religious and belief communities face. And these mischaracterizations are not incidental but rather well-organised and well-funded as part of a campaign that is spreading the same language and tactics into law at every level across every region.[4]
Countering intolerance must be grounded in the notion that rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated, and OSCE participating states should not shy away from the challenges this may present, but rather renew policies in a contextual and nuanced way. And I would echo the calls of previous speakers that states should choose education, critical thinking, and interfaith and interconvictional dialogue over criminalization.
Thank you.
[1] https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3888744?v=pdf&ln=en
[2] https://www.ippf.org/blogs/2022-sexual-and-reproductive-health-and-rights
[3] https://database.ilga.org/prohibicion-terapias-conversion/; https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2022/733521/EPRS_BRI(2022)733521_EN.pdf
[4] https://www.epfweb.org/node/1147
'Gender, LGBTI+ Rights, and the Right to Freedom of Religion or Belief', Humanists International