Consultation:

The Oslo Coalition for the Freedom of Religion or Belief organises a consultation for international and Norwegian experts and activists in the field of mission and human rights in Oslo 31st August to 2nd September 2006. The total number of participants will be around 25, of whom about 10 will be international experts from Azerbaijan, Sri Lanka, Europe and the US.

Purpose:

- To facilitate a discussion among academics, missionaries and activists in the field of mission and human rights on how missionary activities relate to the freedom of religion or belief in concrete situations.
- To explore whether or how broadly based ethical considerations might lead to commonly agreed norms for missionary activities. This aim can be reached through work on a voluntary code of conduct for missionary activities.

General issues:

The conference will build on work already carried out in the Oslo Coalition. The document [ref.: The right to try to convince the other: Proselytism and human rights] forms the basis for the legal understanding of human rights in the project, and reports from delegation visits to Azerbaijan and Sri Lanka provide important empirical data and starting points for some of the discussion.

The consultation will consider missionary activities by all religions, and equally have a variety of religious contexts in focus. Attention should be on the legal frameworks that allow or limit missionary activities as well as on the implementation (or non-implementation) of these as well as on other structures that further or limit the full exercise of religious freedom.

The right to religious freedom is limited by other human rights. In addition, one person’s religious freedom may be limited by the religious freedom of another. Thus one interesting field for exploration is the interaction between the freedom to propagate religion on the one hand and the freedom to practice one’s religion without interference on the other. Individual and collective interests may also be in conflict.

Concrete issues:

Experiences from Azerbaijan and Sri Lanka will be the starting point for discussions of a more universal nature.

Among the concrete issues that will be explored are the following:
• The relationship between material aid and missionary activities and questions of unequal distribution of material resources, sometimes along other lines than numerical minority and majority situations.
• Religious freedom and children.
• Responsible descriptions of the religiously other.
• Cultural hegemony and cultural sensitivity.
• Introduction of legislation to limit missionary activities.

Code of conduct:

Special attention will be given to the relationship between the legal human rights framework on the one hand and ethical considerations on the other. The human rights conventions build to a certain degree on common ethical considerations. Ethical considerations in concrete contexts might however lead to a broad (although not universally shared) ethical agreement which extends further than that codified in the human rights conventions.

One central aim of the consultation is to initiate work on a code of conduct for which broad acceptance among actors from different religious communities and in different cultural contexts will be sought.

The conference should produce a first draft of such a code of conduct and agree on further procedures for its completion and general acceptance.

Process:

Apart from a commitment to the human rights conventions the project operates with no set solutions to the challenges that are raised. Emphasis is put on listening to the voices both of those who feel that their missionary activities are unduly hindered as well as of those who feel themselves victimised or threatened by the missionary activities of others. Openness and mutual respect are central both in the conclusions reached and in the process leading up to conclusions.

The consultation will work through plenary presentations and discussions as well as through discussions in smaller groups through which concrete contributions towards the work on shared a code of conduct will be made.