كليدواژه :
Human Rights , Religion , Race , Vulnerable People
چكيده فارسي :
Discrimination and xenophobia are threats to peace, and in many occasions have led to armed conflicts. Similarly the UN Special Rapporteur on Racism, Doudou Diène finds racism and xenophobia, rather than terrorism, as “the most serious threats to democracy”. On the other hand, international struggle against non-discrimination, fascism and xenophobia, along with protection of minorities, has been concentrated on the racial and national aspects of vulnerable people, rather than the religious ones. This policy seems no more adequate when as Abdelfattah Amor, the former UN Special Rapporteur on religious intolerance states that “there are borderline cases where racial and religious distinctions are far from clear-cut. Abdelfattah Amor adds, “apart from any discrimination, the identity of many minorities, or even large groups of people, is defined by both racial and religious aspects. Hence, many instances of discrimination are aggravated by the effects of multiple identities.” Similarly Diène refers to “the centrality of the amalgamation of the factors of race, culture and religion in the post- 9/11 ideological atmosphere of intolerance and polarization.” According to him this atmosphere “favors the incitement to racial and religious hatred… [and] is indicated by the latest controversies about the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Denmark.” The main argument of the paper will be on the similar purpose of race oriented human rights instruments such as CERD Convention, Apartheid Convention and Genocide Convention on the one hand, and religion oriented instruments, such as the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance Based on Religion or Belief, on the other. The research suggests that while the main purpose of these instruments are to protect all vulnerable people,including some people on the ground of race or ethnic and excluding others on ground of religion is not in line with the purpose of these instruments, and itself is discriminatory. To support the argument, another comparison can be made between the purpose of limiting clauses in Articles 19(2) of the ICCPR and 10(2) of the ECHR on the one hand, and Article s 20(2) of the ICCPR and 4 of the CERD Convention, on the other hand. While the purposes of the limitation clauses of the former articles are such matters as public policy or rights of others, the main purpose of the latter articles are protection of vulnerable ‘others’, which is similar to the purpose of all international and regional instruments on protection of vulnerable, for which affirmative measures have to be undertaken. To protect security and peace and , and in this line to address the shortcoming of legal bases of combating xenophobe and to include all ‘others’ under the protection of anti-discrimination, anti-racism and anti-xenophobia struggle, the paper suggests exploring the concept of ethnoreligousity to be replaced, when appropriate, with merely ethnic (racial) or religion element.
