The UN should revisit its treatment of freedom of religion or belief and its watching procedures over all states, members and non-members.
by Marco Respinti*
*Conclusions of the webinar “The UN, the Two Covenants, and the Tai Ji Men Case,” co-organized by CESNUR and Human Rights Without Frontiers on October 24, 2024, on the United Nations Day.
Every year, the United Nations celebrates days of observances and special dates whose number is also growing. This is done to underline the importance of several issues the United Nations wants humankind to reflect upon and act accordingly. Virtually, all these issues have their roots in the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, which the United Nations approved on December 10, 1948.
One important issue the United Nations celebrates every year is the establishment of the United Nations itself. That anniversary is of course today.
The UN was established in 1945 after the disaster of World War II to bind possibly all nations to find viable alternative to war. At that time the number of member states was 50; as of 2024, it is 193.
At the core of the United Nations, two documents lie: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), commonly referred to as the “Two Covenants”. While they had been drafted as a single document in 1954, the tensions caused by the Cold War (1947‒1991) got them to be separated into two texts approved independently in 1966 and 1976. In this series of webinars on the Tai Ji Men case brought to us by the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR) and Human Right Without Frontiers (HRWF)‒which I salute and thank‒different panelists had occasions to focus and discuss suggestions prompted by the UN through its days of observance, including the “Two Covenants.” Today we return to this important topic.
In a previous webinar, I concentrated on the need to return to a unified text merging ICCPR and ICESCR, as it was originally devised. This need is advocated by many scholars and rests, first, on the fact that the Cold War is now over and its problems as well. Secondly, it rests on the fact that a human being is a unity and his or her rights and duties should always come together, not diluted in time. Said differently, civil, political and economic rights can be separated from social and cultural rights only at great risk and even danger.
The separation of ICCPR and ICESCR into two texts was basically a concession to the Soviet Union, i.e., a capitulation to a rogue and bloody totalitarian power, which of course has no reason to remain untouched today. Moreover, the parcelization of human rights that such a basic capitulation to brutality implied is completely unacceptable for an organization whose rationale is the defense of human dignity. From this point of view, the permanence of separated “Two Covenants” can be listed as one of the failures of the United Nations.
Also, the line of demarcation between the “Two Covenants” is worth considering. The division of the original text into two separate charters, not only separated civil and political rights from economic, social, and cultural rights. It also severed social rights from civil and political rights and bound cultural rights not with civil, social and political rights, but with economic rights.
While it is natural to connect the culture of a group of people with that group’s attempt to build a viable society administered by just politics, the “Two Covenants” imply that cultural questions are a function of economy.
Again, this is a huge concession to the materialistic cast of mind of Marxism-Leninism, which played a gigantic role in the redrafting of what is now the “Two Covenants” system. Another peculiarity marks that double chart. Freedom of religion or belief is considered among the civil and political rights of the human being, not among cultural rights. A final equation can then be drawn. The economy, which gives the correct cultural answers to the immaterial needs of human beings, does not include spiritual wants. This was a terrible failure of the UN, which I think should be redressed as soon as possible.
All this bears directly on what we call the Tai Ji Men case, a monstrous example of an injustice perpetrated legally, or seemingly legally, by a democratic nation that remains, no matter what, a strong and strategic ally of people of good will against rogue states.
The Tai Ji Men case concerns a peaceful, law-abiding, patriotic group of citizens of the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan still paying a high price, both spiritually and materially, for having done nothing wrong and after having been cleared of all fabricated accusations that had been moved against them in more than a quarter of a century.
The ROC is not a member of the United Nations. On purpose, the webinars of this series are held on UN days of observance even if Taiwan is not a member state. It is in fact a profound conviction of the organizers, panelists, and testimonials that the provisions of the UN should morally regard also ROC. The ROC itself agrees to this, as it decided unilaterally to incorporate the “Two Covenants” into its domestic legislation in 2009.
Of course, none of the organizers of this series of webinars as well as all participants, be they panelists or testimonials, want to dictate the lines of international diplomacy, telling the UN what it should or should not do as to its member states. At the same time, none of us can imagine that the UN wants simply to ignore the fate of innocent people in ROC using the non-membership of ROC in the UN as a justification. What I am saying here is that the UN cannot continue to turn its head away from what is happening in the ROC, adding failure to failure.
It is time for the Tai Ji Men case to be considered internationally at top level as an example of blatant injustice. Again, this should not be constructed as a call for altering the delicate balance of the UN membership. Each of us may have legitimate second thoughts on that, but ours today is a totally different topic and should not be constructed as an interference in state politics. Tai Ji Men is non-partisan and non-political. Ours is simply the scandalized denunciation of a terribly unjust conduct that the UN cannot afford to tolerate.
The record of human rights, chiefly freedom of religion or belief, of some member states of the UN is quite dubious and even openly miserable. While the UN should address that topic, it should also put some serious questions to non-member states that legitimately boast themselves as bastions of democracy.
