Mr President,

1. In current debates, there is a widely felt perception that the international community is confronted with the difficult task to balance freedom of religion, freedom of expression, respect of religious and non-religious beliefs and convictions, defamation of religion and members of a religion. The Special Rapporteurs on freedom of religion or belief and on Contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance have illustrated well this complexity. How can one find a way forward?

2. The development of the protection and promotion of all fundamental rights, begun with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), shows that religious freedom can serve as an element of synthesis, as a bridge, among the diverse categories of human rights. The profession of a religion in public or in private is in fact a freedom that belongs not only in the area of civil and political rights - and therefore linked to freedom of thought, of expression and worship - but also in that of economic, social and cultural rights. Such a linkage is evident in the power of self-organization of religions, in the charitable action of individual members of faith communities and in the forms of solidarity carried out by religious institutions, among others, in the fields of health, education and formation. Moreover, the presence and influence of the principal world religions have often been a means of transcending the subjective limitations of the positivist juridical order with objective moral norms that serve the common good of all humanity.

3. Acknowledging to religious freedom the role of guaranteeing the interrelation among the different fundamental rights, it means that public powers should work in such a way that the profession of a religion should not limit civil rights or political and institutional participation nor should it ever be used to deny economic, social and cultural rights to individuals or to communities.

4. The principles and the rules for the protection of fundamental rights, that also through the action of the Human Rights Council and its efforts to provide fair procedures and mechanisms, are in a process of consolidation as patrimony of the international community and of the various countries, give evidence that there is no contrast between religious freedom and freedom of expression:  both belong to those intellectual faculties proper to the human person, to his/her action in the public and private spheres.

5. The reflection of the Council is challenged to consider the demands that today call for regulating the religious phenomenon before cases of discrimination and of real defamation of religions and members of a religion. But such demands show that international action, together with the internal initiatives of States, is called to guarantee a just balance in the exercise of these two rights, recognizing that the freedom of expressing a religious creed, when authentic, assumes a public function:  it contributes to social cohesion and therefore to the peaceful living together of all people, minorities and majority, believers and non believers, within the same country.

6. Mr President,

In conclusion, the appropriate social and political context within which to promote and protect all human rights, including the profession of a religion or changing or rejecting it, implies the acceptance that human rights are interrelated and that international standards should be translated into judicial and legal national provisions for the equal benefit, protection and freedom of every person.

Thank you, Mr President