Human rights expert David Griffiths recently authored a LinkedIn post offering his reflections on the 2022 International Ministerial Conference on Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB). As someone who spent nine years at a religious freedom advocacy organization and then seven years at Amnesty International, Griffiths brings valuable insights to the evolution of the FoRB field and its relationship to the broader human rights agenda.
In this conversation, Religion & Diplomacy editor Judd Birdsall poses several questions to Griffiths, building on his reflections on the London conference. Griffiths currently serves as a human rights consultant with Chatham House and as a member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Panel of Experts on FoRB. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford and SOAS University of London.
Birdsall: In your reflections on the London FoRB ministerial, you highlighted the irony that some speakers lamented the marginalization of FoRB even as attention to the issue has increased dramatically in recent decades. The London event featured remarks from the Prince of Wales, archbishop of canterbury, prime minister, and foreign minister, and was attended by hundreds of senior government officials (including a growing numbers of FoRB envoys), religious leaders, scholars, and civil society activists from around the world. Why do you think many FoRB advocates still have this idea that FoRB is a marginalized issue?
David Griffiths
Griffiths: That was exactly the question I asked myself when I witnessed how different things have become for the FoRB sector. This kind of event would have been unthinkable a decade ago. The United States has a long history of treating FoRB as a priority, but I was impressed to see the evidence of an increasingly global coalition having been built around it—including highly secularized countries in Europe which perhaps have less natural affinity for FoRB and less awareness of how consequential it is in many countries.
The continued talk of marginalization might largely be a matter of inertia—it is hard to change an embedded narrative, especially when the same people, who have been saying the same thing for decades, continue to hold sway. It’s also a good rallying cry to describe one’s group or cause as marginalized even when this may no longer be demonstrably true. And since FoRB is increasingly championed by governments, I wonder if it’s also a way of keeping alive the insurgent spirit within the FoRB movement.
However, I think the FoRB community can start to tell a different story now. It should be proud of its efforts to put this issue firmly onto the agenda, but there are other challenges. There is undoubtedly a problem of estrangement between the FoRB and wider human rights community. There is a lack of coherence between FoRB policy and wider human rights policy. And there is a question of how much impact FoRB advocacy is making. These are more difficult issues to talk about, but I think it’s time to move on from marginalization.
Birdsall: Have you seen this dynamic—a questionable self-perception of marginalization—at play in regards to other human rights causes?
Griffiths: A similar dynamic applies to many human rights issues, often with good reason. Most human rights struggles are built on a story about being under siege and fighting against oppression. That sense of being up against a hostile mainstream is intrinsic to much human rights work.
The perception of being a marginalized cause is especially relevant when we are talking about the status of particular groups and their struggles against hostility, discrimination, or violence. Women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights campaigns are perhaps seen from the outside as having achieved significant success, but the view is different from the inside: advocates often feel embattled and buffeted by strong political headwinds and struggle to preserve the progress they have made. These are very genuine anxieties. Like FoRB, there is an acute awareness that these are divisive, contested issues within many societies, and it feels like a zero-sum game. It is tough to build consensus around accepting diversity and equality.
I think it’s also relevant to mention the language and imagery we like to use in human rights work. We often use metaphors of battles, for example. But I have been increasingly influenced by a movement to shift our language and talk about hope. That means using different metaphors: nurturing instead of fighting, for example. It also means describing the change we want to see instead of lamenting the abuses. Narratives about marginalization are tactically useful up to a point, but hopefulness is a powerful motivator too.
Birdsall: A couple of your reflections concerned the connection—or, indeed, lack of connection—between FoRB and other human rights. Going back to your comment about the self-perception of marginalization, I wonder if some of the lack of connection to the broader human rights field stems from a sense among FoRB advocates that FoRB is finally getting some overdue attention and the focus on FoRB at events like the London ministerial should thus not be diluted by other human rights concerns. And there may also be a deeper sense that some human rights agendas are a threat to FoRB. What are your thoughts on the reasons for this lack of connection?
Griffiths: Your analysis could well be right. Certainly, the FoRB advocacy community is unusually (maybe uniquely) sequestered from the wider human rights community. It is dominated by different people, it has a distinctive discourse, and it has one foot in the world of institutional religion. I think it’s also fair to say that the FoRB community, at least in Global North countries, tends to draw support from a different part of the political spectrum as compared to other human rights issues.
But whatever the historical reasons, I don’t think it is healthy to allow this estrangement to continue. It goes against the very essence of human rights to think in terms of one issue being diluted by another. We have this core idea that human rights are indivisible and interrelated; you cannot simply privilege one above another, and in some fundamental way they are all connected to each other. So, when we talk about violations of the right to FoRB, these may also take the form of other human rights violations—whole communities become marginalized because of religious identity; they are excluded from public life, discriminated against, silenced; they lose access to services, women become doubly disadvantaged, and so on. But if FoRB tries to set itself apart from other human rights, it loses the vocabulary with which it can describe violations, as well as legal and institutional mechanisms and tools for seeking recourse and justice.
It works the other way round too—the wider human rights community has taken insufficient account of FoRB, to the detriment of its analysis and the solutions it proposes.
I get that the FoRB community may not want to lose its increasingly privileged status, but I think this is the time for a new generation to build on all the progress that has been made and establish new points of connection with the wider human rights community. I am encouraged that there are some tentative steps in this direction, but there is a long way to go.
Birdsall: What would a greater degree of connection look like in practice? Have you seen some good examples of that synergy?
Griffiths: The estrangement between FoRB and other human rights issues is much less of an issue in many Global South countries, where it would seem nonsensical. I have been privileged to spend a lot of time with the human rights movement in South Asia, and the interwovenness of FoRB and other human rights issues is simply assumed. The reality is that you can’t talk about them in isolation from each other. I have also been critical of the impulses of the human rights community in the West to try to avoid talking about religious identity or FoRB in relation to South Asia—it makes no sense, and it leads to bad analysis.
This is not complicated. It’s basically a matter of talking about FoRB alongside other rights and talking about other rights alongside FoRB, trying to see the whole picture.
In terms of strengthening connections and synergies on a global level, it might seem a remote prospect, but I think there could be lessons to share between the FoRB and LGBTQ+ advocacy communities. Both are often pushing back against entrenched attitudes and policies which demonize a particular group of people based on their identity. Both have managed to achieve impressive successes through a variety of tactics. True, FoRB advocates and LGBTQ+ advocates might typically come from different baskets, but I have worked with many individuals from both groups, and I know many sincere, committed people who want the best for the communities they are working for. There are always going to be some people with extreme positions, but as long as both sides recognize the legitimacy of the other, there should be a basis for conversation and perhaps even some cooperation. It’s worth exploring, in my view.
Birdsall: You argue that among human rights concerns, FoRB has the advantage of “access to huge constituencies of engaged religious communities, for whom activism is rooted in deeply-held beliefs and values.” I think you’re right that millions upon millions of believers deeply believe in FoRB as a foundational principle—and donate and advocate accordingly. How have you seen human rights groups effectively engage and mobilize religious communities around issues other than FoRB?
Griffiths: These is no shortage of historic examples of religious communities engaged in major human rights struggles. The anti-apartheid movement was one example, although shamefully there are two sides to that story. The death penalty is another example from the last few decades. Religious communities have been a deep well of support for efforts to combat extreme poverty and all the social and economic rights violations which that entails. Many faith-based communities have supported refugees in the face of callous policies from rich countries. This is a tiny selection—there are countless religious communities engaged in local struggles for justice every day.
I think the impulse for these things comes largely from within religious communities, rather than from external pressures acting upon them in any organized way. But they demonstrate that there is great moral and organizing power within faith communities.
There are serious exceptions to this. It worries me deeply when religious communities become a core source of support for nationalist or populist agendas—that way lies extreme danger. We see it in so many parts of the world, across all the big faiths, as religious and political dogmas are fused together in the service of violent, vindictive power.
But I still think religious communities can stand as a powerful moral force against oppressive power. Many religious believers across different faiths may find resonance with the deeper underpinnings of human rights—that we are all equal and should enjoy a life of freedom and dignity; and that it is incumbent on all of us to stand up for those who are oppressed.
Birdsall: I want to pick up on your comments related to FoRB and gender. You observed: “The FoRB sector still seems to have a huge gender problem,” noting that the opening and closing plenary panels were nearly “manels” were it not for the inclusion of Nazila Ghanea in both. I wonder if some of this gender imbalance is inherent in the FoRB field because religious diversity is often a higher priority than gender balance, and the leadership of many religious groups is primarily or exclusively male. I would also note that I was the only man on the panel on which I spoke at the London conference, and several other panels at the event were majority female. That said, I think you’re certainly right that more can be done include women’s voices in the FoRB community. How do we do that?
Griffiths: I was taken aback by the maleness of the ministerial from the moment I arrived. Even if there were some majority-women panels in the parallel sessions, the plenary was overwhelmingly dominated by male speakers. There are some brilliant and formidable women working in this field (not least Nazila), and it would have been good to see more of them taking a prominent position—both for the perspectives they would bring, and to offer positive role models to younger women in attendance for whom I think the optics of the conference would have been very discouraging.
This is also an issue of coherence. The UK treats gender equality as a foreign policy priority, but you would not have known it from the London FoRB ministerial. And that is without mentioning the UK’s subsequent backtracking on an agreed statement about women’s rights and FoRB, which was a real diplomatic shocker.
What can be done? I was struck while listening to the parallel session on women and FoRB, that this really is so often the sharp end of FoRB violations. The moderator made a case that women are disproportionately exposed partly because they constitute a majority of religious believers—and to this we can add that women who reject patriarchal religious structures altogether are also at risk of reprisals. We have to talk about the distinct abuses that women face, from restrictions on clothing to sexual violence, and to take into account the intersectional nature of discrimination against women—that they might face overlapping forms of discrimination linked to their gender and perhaps economic status as well as their religious identity. This requires a whole different level of analysis compared to men. I think the FoRB sector needs to pivot dramatically in this direction, and I suggested it as a worthy thematic focus for the next ministerial.
Beyond that, it’s about consistently giving voice to women in any spaces that discuss FoRB. I understand that religious leadership is overwhelmingly male (and it was good that the ministerial included at least some women leaders), but the FoRB agenda is not owned by religious leaders. And the exclusion of women from the conversation—all too often—is inexcusable and impoverishes the whole sector.
Birdsall: Another irony noted in your piece is that even as policy attention to FoRB has exploded, the global FoRB situation has deteriorated. More and more governments have appointed FoRB envoys but evidence is lacking that that approach has actually advanced FoRB. I previously worked for the U.S. religious freedom ambassador, so allow me to push back a bit and then solicit your response. I would make a few points. The first would be that cultural attitudes—and, subsequently, laws and policies—regarding matters of religion tend to change very slowly. It can take generations, even centuries, to move away from systems of religious repression. The United States established the world’s first FoRB envoy in 1998. The second point would be to contest the idea that the global FoRB situation is worsening. That perception is based largely on reports from the Pew Research Center that measure “religious restrictions” and not religious freedom per se. Third, religious persecution is an enormously complex and multifaceted problem, and when there is improvement it’s hard to point to one singular cause of that improvement—such as the intervention of a FoRB envoy. But all that said, it remains that there is as yet little to show for all the diplomatic attention to FoRB over the past couple of decades. Do you think the answer is to establish more envoys? What other mechanisms would you recommend?
Griffiths: I fully accept those points! The United States has led the way in setting up diplomatic structures to promote FoRB, and it is natural that like-minded countries would seek to follow its example.
But the concern I expressed was less about the efficacy of FoRB envoys, and more about lazy thinking about what constitutes success. I think it is a common trap across the human rights sector to try and replicate what we believe to have been a successful methodology without properly interrogating it. In recent years, I have seen huge improvements when it comes to understanding impact and what interventions are most effective. It’s an imperfect discipline to say the least, but the effort to understand how change comes about should be foundational to our work. So, beyond the signaling, I would be looking for evidence of what the growing number of FoRB envoys have been able to achieve and why more of them would be helpful.
You are right that I may be guilty of laziness myself in citing the Pew reports which offer an incomplete account of the state of FoRB. The forensic measurement of progress on any given human rights issue is a kind of Holy Grail within the sector—although groups like the Human Rights Measurement Initiative are trying. But I think as we look at much of the world over the past years there are plenty of warning signs about the direction things are going—especially for Muslims. The intensifying discrimination and violence in India, the plight of Uyghurs and other mainly Muslim groups at the hands of the Chinese Community Party, and the travel ban introduced by President Trump in the United States a few years ago are all big-ticket anti-Muslim policies in powerful countries, which should warn against false optimism.
Ultimately, the struggle for FoRB—as with any human rights issue—will be won at national and local levels, in communities and in individual attitudes and habits. Any impact on this will require multi-layered interventions and prolonged commitment. It will require sustained support of local actors able to make a difference over the longer-term—and doing this in a way that does not perpetuate the harmful myth that FoRB is a Western political agenda. So sure, envoys may be part of that, but they are not the only (or even the main) answer.
Birdsall: Echoing Amartya Sen to some extent, you highlight the tension between the U.S.-led democracy paradigm and the China-led development paradigm. And you argue that “FoRB could be approached in a way that could help to break the development-democracy binary, including with the emerging concept of religious equality.” I share your interest in “religious equality,” as it is a concept that has more resonance than “religious freedom” or “freedom of religion or belief” in many contexts. How do you see the “religious equality” framing breaking down the development-democracy binary?
Griffiths: I am new to this idea, but instinctively I like it. I find vague proclamations about “freedom” or “liberty” quite problematic because they don’t mean anything specific, and often they are used for political signaling rather than anything substantive. U.K. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss included in her speech to the ministerial the idea of a “network of liberty” to which FoRB could contribute. I find this idea rather vacuous—what does it mean, and who is it trying to convince?
Western countries often treat human rights as a subset of democracy, while China tries to defang human rights by talking about it as a path to development. There is real polarization between these two positions. FoRB does not have to get caught up in this. The actual situation of people facing FoRB violations often encompasses long-term marginalization and inequality as well as issues of violence and discrimination. If we talk about building equity among different communities, we have a more holistic and less ideologically charged vocabulary. So, I think there is something worth exploring here.
Birdsall: Staying on the topic of language, you mention that “FoRB” is a contraction of a longer phrase in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): “freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.” Could wider use of that framing help to broaden the tent of FoRB advocacy and facilitate the kinds of connections among human rights causes that you discussed earlier?
Griffiths: Without a doubt, yes. The “FoRB” formulation is quite restricted, and more superficial than the language we find in the UDHR. I think the concept of freedom of thought can be a particularly valuable resource as we consider our relationship with technology and how it should be regulated. The former special rapporteur, Ahmed Shaheed, made this the theme of his report to the UN General Assembly in 2021. I am certainly no specialist in this area, but I think of Harari’s speculations about what happens when we hand over more and more of our decision-making to algorithms, for example, and the impact it has on our own cognitive abilities. The idea of protecting our freedom of thought could be an important one as we confront this future.
This stuff might seem far removed from the real-world urgency of violence afflicting religious communities or populist nationalism threatening minority rights – but it’s not. Remember the role that unaccountable social media algorithms play in stimulating hatred and violence—the role of Facebook in the violence against the Rohingya people in Myanmar since 2017 is a well-known example. Our autonomy and agency, our freedom to pursue truth independently and to think for ourselves, is directly imperiled by a prevailing business model in Big Tech that seeks to sensationalize information and to create tribes, exactly the right conditions for identity-based violence and discrimination.
So, I think freedom of thought, conscience, and religion has a very direct relevance in confronting big questions which are not only fundamentally important but strikingly urgent in our world right now.