governmental Organizations in Consultative Status with the United Nations, has resulted in its completion.

I suggest that the Subcommittee will find the Declaration a valuable framework for its work. The Declaration is clearly destined to be the prime benchmark for anyone who seeks in an international forum to make a case based on religious freedom.

In my opinion, there are three basic issues that need to be addressed in any attempt to define the parameters of religious freedom: (1) the right of members of religious faiths to practice their religion with a minimum of state interference; (2) the prevention of discriminatory treatment by Governments of individuals or groups on the ground of their membership in a particular faith; (3) some requirement that the state make a good faith effort to suppress the manifestation, by private persons or groups, of intolerance for others based on the holding of a different religion or belief. The Declaration is not a perfect instrument, but it does address itself in a forthright way to each of these matters. The comments that follow concerning each of the substantive provisions of the Declaration will indicate how this is so.

Article I of the Declaration first of all flirts with what must be the most intractable theoretical issue in this area: What is religion? What kinds of beliefs are protected by a ban on religious persecution? I say that Article I flirts with the issue, because ultimately it does not get to the core of it. What it does, though, is highly significant. By the use of the words "freedom to have a religion or whatever belief of his choice" (and this is plain from the preparatory work of the Declaration)

it makes the point that the freedom concerned extends to theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs. Freedom of religion includes freedom not to have a religion. Second, the Article makes it clear that freedom to have a religion includes freedom to "manifest" one's religious beliefs. It is one thing to say that in the solitude of one's own mind there is freedom of belief. It is quite another--and for our purposes much more important--thing to acknowledge a right to act out the tenets of one's belief, particularly in the company of others. I have in mind the kind of activities later listed in Article VI of the Declaration--freedom to worship with others, to engage in religious practices, to learn and to teach, and to have some kinds of religious organizations. Such rights are not absolute in any legal system, or under the Declaration. They may, according to Article I, be subject to "such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others." Reasonable people can differ 3 about where such lines of limitation are to be drawn, and one cannot always expect good-faith line-drawing in this area in domestic or international forums, but the basic statement of the right to manifest one's religion in Article I, and the specifics later in Article VI, are of crucial significance.

Article II prohibits discrimination by any state, institution, group or person on grounds of religion or belief. It protects many aspects of individual life, including the right to aspire to positions in public life or in the civil service, the taking of oaths, taxation, and the procedures for marriage, divorce and burial.

Article III describes, in a very general way, discrimination between human beings as an affront to human dignity and a disavowal of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations and a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenants on Human Rights. I am not sure that it adds anything of legal substance to the Declaration. Certainly it is appropriate in an important United Nations document to recall some of the basic purposes and principles of the organization, but the sentiments could probably have been fitted as well into a preambular paragraph as they have been into the substantive provisions.

Article IV requires some social engineering with the use of the tools of the law--civil or criminal. Pursuant to Paragraph 1, states are obligated to take effective measures to eliminate discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief in the enjoyment of human rights in all fields of civil, economic, political, social and cultural life. (This seems to mean discrimination in the private as well as in the public sector.) Paragraph 2 contains the sole substantive obligation on the matter of intolerance as opposed to discrimination.5 In addition to enacting or rescinding

legislation when necessary to prohibit discrimination on the grounds of religion and belief, states are required to "take all appropriate measures to combat intolerance on the grounds of religion or other beliefs in this matter." The details of this obligation are left vague, but they must include the adoption of relevant civil and criminal legislation, of administrative practices and perhaps educational campaigns aimed at the eradication of acts and even

attitudes of intolerance.

(It is obviously easier to legislate

to change practices or patterns of behavior than it is to change attitudes of mind, as the history of civil rights legislation in many countries demonstrates.)

Article V pertains to the moral life of the child and the rights of parents in that regard. One might have hoped that the Declaration would make specific reference to the right of religious groups or individuals to withdraw from the state school system in order to obtain an alternative "religious" education. The right is, however, spelled out in a number of other documents adopted 6 within the United Nations family and the failure to mention it here in no way derogates from its existence.7

8

Article VI is the most detailed provision of the Declaration. It contains a list of various manifestations of religion or belief which are protected, subject to the demands of public safety and the like referred to in Article I. It includes the rights of worship and assembly, the right to have an appropriate organizational structure (at least for charitable and humanitarian purposes) and to have communications (although not necessarily organic links) with like-minded persons and groups at the national and international levels. Article VI (c) guarantees the right to "Make, to acquire and to use" the "articles and materials" related to the rites or customs of religion or belief. This matter of obtaining religious paraphernalia is of great significance to, for example, Jewish groups in the Soviet Union. There is a less forthright statement of this right in respect of published material. All that the Declaration guarantees in this instance, is the right

in Article VI (d) to "publish and disseminate" relevant publications. The absence of the word "acquire" (as used in Article VI (c) relating to "articles and materials") leaves open the argument that the draft does not help in such areas as alleviating the difficulties experienced in sending Hebrew Bibles and other Jewish religious texts to Jews in the USSR. Despite possible flaws such as these, Article VI is a remarkably detailed and forthcoming statement.

In

Article VII is not as strongly worded as one might wish, but its import is that the rights guaranteed in the Declaration must not be mere paper rights. There must be effective national means to enforce them. The particular techniques used are left to the legal and administrative traditions of particular countries. a country like the United States, most enforcement might be expected to take place in the Courts. In other societies, bodies such as a Human Rights Commission or an Ombudsman, bodies which act more like a conciliator than a Court, are likely to be used. But some structural action is required.

Finally, Article VIII provides that nothing in the Declaration shall be construed as restricting or derogating from any right defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenants on Human Rights. A few examples will show the significance of this provision. (1) Fears had been expressed during the drafting process that the Declaration was taking shape in such a way as to undermine, rather than contribute to religious freedom. 9 (2) The Arab nations succeeded in removing from the Declaration any reference to the right to change religion, a right