Religious Human Rights and Peace

Abstract

This article analyzes the international human rights to have or adopt a religion or belief and to manifest one's religion or belief as liberties of individual human beings protected by duties of non-interference and immunities from extinction holding against State Parties. It identifies their moral grounds as analogous moral religious human rights and morally proper purposes of international law, including the promotion of international peace. It argues that although these human rights threaten peace to a limited extent, on balance they would, if universally respected, enhance both internal and international peace even more.

Acknowledgments

Carl Wellman is a Lewin Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Washington University in Saint Louis. He was born in 1926, graduated from the University of Arizona in 1949, and received his doctorate from Harvard University in 1954. He taught at Lawrence College from 1953 until 1968 and then at Washington University from 1968 until 1999. His major publications are Welfare Rights (1982); A Theory of Rights (1985); Real Rights (1995); An Approach to Rights (1997); The Proliferation of Rights (1999); Medical Law and Moral Rights (2009); and The Moral Dimensions of Human Rights (2011).

A much shorter version of this article was presented at an international conference on human rights organized by the Center for the Study of Human Rights of Mofid University in Qom, Iran. Its title and concluding section reflect the topic of this conference, “Peace, Human Rights and Religion.” However, its substance is much more general and relevant to a wide range of theoretical and practical issues.