Iraqi civic leaders meet to consider religious freedom
-14/04/05
Influential leaders from Iraq’s NGO, educational, religious and business communities have met in Amman, Jordan, to explore key constitutional questions concerning the future of the country – including gender equality, federalism, and the role of religion.
Iraq’s interim constitution, the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), requires the permanent constitution to be drafted and finalized after public consultation.
Preeta Bansal, who chairs the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, was one of the participants in the talks, presenting the findings of the latest research on the role of religion in the constitutions of predominantly Muslim constitutions across the world.
She underscored the variety of models in existence in the Muslim world, the wide range of possible constitutional roles ascribed to Islam, and the fundamental standards associated with freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief under international
human rights law.
There is continuing concern among international human rights groups about Christian and other minorities in Iraq, the pace and style of the democratization process and the impact of what many see as the continuing US occupation.
The space created for civil society groups in shaping the Iraqi constitution has been welcomed, but there has been criticism of the heavy dependence of the process on the US.
The working session in Amman was convened under the auspices of the American Bar Association’s Iraq Legal Development Program. The LDP stresses that its role is facilitative rather than prescriptive.
The United States has a strong record of promoting religious freedom, but although the US-led invasion of Iraq removed a brutal dictatorship and opened the road for representative governance, many hold that it was carried out in defiance of international law.
The US is also charged with breaching international standards of human rights both in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay. Its record in supporting dictatorships in Latin America in the 1980s has also come back into the spotlight in relation to Presidential nominees recently.
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom was created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 to monitor the status of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief globally, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related international instruments, and to give independent policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and the Congress.