ISSUE - Nigeria: Are there solutions for Jos?

 

 

THE TANDEM PROJECT

http://www.tandemproject.com.

 

UNITED NATIONS, HUMAN RIGHTS,

FREEDOM OF RELIGION OR BELIEF

 

Available in other languages on http://www.tandemproject.com 

 

DEADLY NIGERIAN RELIGIOUS CLASHES KILL HUNDREDS

 

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Issue:  Nigeria: Are there solutions for Jos? 

 

For: United Nations, Governments, Religions or Beliefs, Academia, NGOs, Media, Civil Society

                                                                                                                                                                             

Review: Deadly Nigerian Religious Clashes Kill Hundreds, New York Times, by Lydia Polgreen, 1 December 2008.

 

Excerpt: “Despite the history of religious bloodshed in the region, residents, officials and activists said the city had come a long way toward healing divisions. Interfaith commissions set up to improve relations between the faiths and ethnic groups after the 2001 riots appeared to help cool tensions. ‘Things had really improved in Jos,’ said Nankin Bagudu, a Christian and state government commissioner who had worked with the League for Human Rights. ‘Nobody expected violence this time.’

 

Mr. Saleh, a Muslim, said that the violence threatened to undo years of careful bridge building between the communities. ‘As someone who had been involved in a peace work between Christians and Muslims, this has set our work back 10 years,’ he said. ‘It will take us a very long time to rebuild the confidence.”

 

The fourth session of the United Nations Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review will be held from 2-13 February, 2009. Nigeria UPR Report will be given in the afternoon of Monday 9 February 2009. Will the National Report comment on solutions for Jos?

 

The Tandem Project will provide information for the Nigerian Government’s National Report which will be broadcast on the live web cast. The Nigerian National Report may or may not refer to the tragedy in Jos. There will be an opportunity for listeners and views of the Nigerian National Report to respond during the fourth session by using The Tandem Project C&C Database.

 

Are there solutions for Jos? The Durban Review Conference will be held 20-29 April, 2009 in Geneva. A Regional Conference for Africa preparatory to the Durban Review Conference was held 24-26 August, 2008 in Abuja, Capital of Nigeria, which is a three hour drive from Jos.

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Link: Deadly Nigeria Clashes Subside, New York Times, by Lydia Polgreen, 1 December 2008.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/world/africa/01nigeria.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print

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This is a link to the SR on Freedom of Religion or Belief 2005 Report on Nigeria. Click to open the link and open the Simple Search. To read type in the Symbol E/CN.4/5/Add.2 and date at the bottom. 07/10/2005. Hit Search and pick the UN language of your choice.

 

http://documents.un.org/welcome.asp?language=E

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Excerpts: Excerpts are presented under the Eight Articles of the 1981 U.N. Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. Examples of extracts are presented prior to an Issue Statement for each Review.  

 

1. 1 Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have a religion or whatever belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practices and teaching.

 

1. 2. No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have a religion or belief of his choice.

 

1. 3 Freedom to manifest one’s religion or belief may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.

 

4. 1 All States shall take effective measures to prevent and eliminate discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief in the recognition, exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms in all fields of civil, economic, political, social and cultural life.

 

4. 2 All States shall make all efforts to enact or rescind legislation where necessary to prohibit any such discrimination, and to take all appropriate measures to combat intolerance on the grounds of religion or other beliefs in this matter.

 

December 1, 2008

Deadly Nigeria Clashes Subside

By LYDIA POLGREEN

DAKAR, Senegal — On Sunday morning, Sani ibn Salihu went to pray for the dead. Even as he arrived at the central mosque of the Nigerian city of Jos to join a throng mourning 364 people whose bodies he said had already been taken there, the battered corpses kept coming: 11 in the hour he spent praying.

“There were women and children, old men,” among the bodies, Mr. Salihu, a peace activist and journalist, said in a telephone interview from Jos, the central Nigerian city where two days of ferocious violence between Christians and Muslims after a disputed local election has left hundreds of people dead.

A tense calm returned to Jos on Sunday as soldiers wrested control of the streets from armed Christian and Muslim gangs that had roamed the city, slaughtering people with guns and machetes and torching houses, churches, shops and cars, according to residents. The sudden and vociferous explosion of religious violence was the worst Nigeria has seen in at least four years.

Religious and health officials gave varying accounts of the death toll but agreed that at least 400 bodies had already been recovered and more probably remained in the charred churches, homes, cars and alleyways that had been no-go zones until Sunday. The Red Cross said that about 7,000 people had fled the most violent neighborhoods and that they were living in shelters.

The clashes began suddenly, taking the city by surprise in both the swiftness and ferocity of the bloodshed, despite a long history of religious violence in the region. The trouble began Friday as results of elections trickled in for important local government posts that control hundreds of thousands of dollars in government funds.

Elections have not been held in Jos for years, in part because of fears that the political parties would split along religious lines, which is in fact what happened. Even before the results were announced, gangs on both sides began rampaging, anticipating defeat. Christian gangs claimed that the governing party, the P.D.P., was being cheated of victory, while Muslim gangs claimed that the opposition A.N.P.P., which is identified largely with Muslims in the north, was being robbed of its win.

Nigeria’s 140 million people are about evenly divided between the Muslim and Christian faiths. People of both religions live all across the country, often cheek by jowl, usually in relative peace.

But the religious divide in this nation of more than 250 ethnic groups mirrors a geographical one, between a historically Muslim north and a Christian and animist south, as well as deep political divisions that cross religious lines. Beyond that there are conflicts over land and political power, which are often intertwined as a result of traditional customs that hold the rights of indigenous people over those of migrants from other parts of the country. Religion is almost always a proxy for those grievances.

The fissures are so profound that it takes only the smallest tremor for a seemingly peaceful community to descend into an abyss of bloodletting. In 2002, a dispute over a perceived insult to Islam during a beauty pageant led to riots in which hundreds died. In 2006, riots over Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad led to the deaths of nearly 200 people in several Nigerian cities, more than in any other country that experienced violence in the global backlash against the cartoons.

Nigeria’s Middle Belt, a band of fertile land that straddles the largely Muslim north and the Christian south, has always been a hotbed of ethnic and religious violence, and Plateau State, of which Jos is the capital, has borne the brunt.

Most of the state’s original inhabitants come from tribes that are almost entirely Christian and animist, but the farmland and grazing pasture has attracted migrants for centuries, especially Muslim Hausa and Fulani people from the more arid north. In Jos, a picturesque city set on a verdant plateau in central Nigeria, 1,000 people died in religious riots in 2001, and in 2004 hundreds more were killed in a nearby city of Yelwa. Jos became a balkanized city, with Muslims and Christians retreating to separate neighborhoods.

Despite the history of religious bloodshed in the region, residents, officials and activists said the city had come a long way toward healing divisions. Interfaith commissions set up to improve relations between the faiths and ethnic groups after the 2001 riots appeared to help cool tensions. “Things had really improved in Jos,” said Nankin Bagudu, a Christian and state government commissioner who had worked with the League for Human Rights. “Nobody expected this kind of violence this time.”

Mr. Salihu, a Muslim, said that the violence threatened to undo years of careful bridge building between the communities.

“As someone who has been involved in a peace work between Christian and Muslims, this has set our work back 10 years,” he said. “It will take us a very long time to rebuild the confidence.”

 

U.N. SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR REPORT ON NIGERIA

E/CN.4/2006/5/Add.2

 

VIII. RECOMMENDATIONS

 

General policy with regard to religions

 

103. With regard to the general policy of the Government of Nigeria vis-à-vis religion and belief, the Special Rapporteur recommends that the Government adopt a more careful approach when it comes to supporting one or the other religious community and consider the possibility of refraining from interfering with religious matters whenever these do not endanger human rights. At the same time, the Government should take very firm positions whenever religion is at the origin of human rights violations, regardless of which religious community is concerned.

 

104. The Government should further strengthen the existing inter-religious dialogue to address the overall objective of promoting religious tolerance, and therefore extend the scope of the dialogue and increase the number of stakeholders in the process. Such initiatives must link local dialogues to the national scene so that signs of trouble are detected early and resolved before violence breaks out. Such dialogue would further create better understanding and accommodation. It must include women and members of civil society so that their concerns are also heard.

 

ISSUE STATEMENT: The terms belief and religion are to be broadly construed. Article 18 is not limited in its application to traditional religions or to religions and beliefs with international characteristics or practices analogous to those of traditional religions. The Committee therefore views with concern any tendency to discriminate against any religion or belief for any reasons, including the fact that they are newly established, or represent religious minorities that may be the subject of hostility by a predominant religious community. - General Comment 22 (48) Article 18, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, UN Human Rights Committee, 20 July 1993 (CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.4

 

General Comment 22 (48) Article 18, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, UN Human Rights Committee, 20 July 1993 (CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.4): The Committee observes that the concept of morals derives from many social, philosophical and religious traditions; consequently, limitations on the freedom to manifest a religion or belief for the purpose of protecting morals must be based on principles not deriving exclusively from a single tradition.

 

International Human Rights Standards on Freedom of Religion or Belief are international law and universal codes of conduct for peaceful cooperation, respectful competition and resolution of conflicts. The standards are a platform for inclusive and genuine dialogue on core principles and values within and among nations, all religions and other beliefs.

 

Surely one of the best hopes for the future of humankind is to embrace a culture in which religions and other beliefs accept one another, in which wars and violence are not tolerated in the name of an exclusive right to truth, in which children are raised to solve conflicts with mediation, compassion and understanding.

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STANDARDS: http://www.tandemproject.com/program/81_dec.htm

 

Submit information under the Eight Articles and sub-paragraphs of the 1981 U.N. Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief by using The Tandem Project Country & Community Database.

 

C&C DATABASE: http://www.tandemproject.com/databases/forms/card.htm

 

The Tandem Project: a non-governmental organization founded in 1986 to build understanding, tolerance and respect for diversity, and to prevent discrimination in matters relating to freedom of religion or belief. The Tandem Project, a non-profit NGO, has sponsored multiple conferences, curricula, reference materials and programs on Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion - and 1981 United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief.

 

The Tandem Project initiative is the result of a co-founder representing the World Federation of United Nations Associations at the United Nations Geneva Seminar, Encouragement of Understanding, Tolerance and Respect in Matters Relating to Freedom of Religion or Belief, called by the UN Secretariat in 1984 on ways to implement the 1981 UN Declaration. In 1986, The Tandem Project organized the first NGO International Conference on the 1981 UN Declaration.

 

The Tandem Project Executive Director is: Michael M. Roan, mroan@tandemproject.com. 

 

The Tandem Project is a UN NGO in Special Consultative Status with the

Economic and Social Council of the United Nations

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Goal: To eliminate all forms of intolerance and discrimination based on religion or belief.

 

Purpose: To build understanding and support for Article 18, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights –Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion - and the 1981 UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. Encourage the United Nations, Governments, Religions or Beliefs, Academia, NGOs, Media and Civil Society to utilize International Human Rights Standards on Freedom of Religion or Belief as essential for long-term solutions to conflicts in all matters relating to religion or belief.

 

Objectives:

 

1. Use International Human Rights Standards on Freedom of Religion or Belief as a platform for genuine dialogue on the core principles and values within and among nations, all religions and other beliefs.

 

2. Adapt these human rights standards to early childhood education, teaching children, from the very beginning, that their own religion is one out of many and that it is a personal choice for everyone to adhere to the religion or belief by which he or she feels most inspired, or to adhere to no religion or belief at all.1

 

Challenge: In 1968 the United Nations deferred work on an International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Religious Intolerance, because of its apparent complexity and sensitivity. In the twenty-first century, a dramatic increase of intolerance and discrimination on grounds of religion or belief is motivating a worldwide search to find solutions to these problems. This is a challenge calling for enhanced dialogue by States and others; including consideration of an International Convention on Freedom of Religion or Belief for protection of and accountability by all religions or beliefs. The tensions in today’s world inspire a question such as:

 

Should the United Nations adopt an International Convention on Freedom of Religion or Belief?

 

Response: Is it the appropriate moment to reinitiate the drafting of a legally binding international convention on freedom of religion or belief? Law making of this nature requires a minimum consensus and an environment that appeals to reason rather than emotions. At the same time we are on a learning curve as the various dimensions of the Declaration are being explored. Many academics have produced voluminous books on these questions but more ground has to be prepared before setting up of a UN working group on drafting a convention. In my opinion, we should not try to rush the elaboration of a Convention on Freedom of Religion or Belief, especially not in times of high tensions and unpreparedness. - UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Asma Jahangir, Prague 25 Year Anniversary Commemoration of the 1981 UN Declaration, 25 November 2006.

 

Option: After forty years this may be the time, however complex and sensitive, for the United Nations Human Rights Council to appoint an Open-ended Working Group to draft a United Nations Convention on Freedom of Religion or Belief. The mandate for an Open-ended Working Group ought to assure nothing in a draft Convention will be construed as restricting or derogating from any right defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants on Human Rights, and the 1981 UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief.

 

Separation of Religion or Belief and State

 

Concept:  Separation of Religion or Belief and State - SOROBAS. The First Preamble to the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads; “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.  This concept suggests States recalling their history, culture and constitution adopt fair and equal human rights protection for all religions or beliefs as described in General Comment 22 on Article 18, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, UN Human Rights Committee, 20 July 1993 (CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.4):

 

Article 18: protects theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief. The terms belief and religion are to be broadly construed. Article 18 is not limited in its application to traditional religions or to religions and beliefs with international characteristics or practices analogous to those of traditional religions. The Committee therefore views with concern any tendency to discriminate against any religion or belief for any reasons, including the fact that they are newly established, or represent religious minorities that may be the subject of hostility by a predominant religious community. Article 18: permits restrictions to manifest a religion or belief only if such limitations are prescribed by law and necessary to protect public safety, order, health or morals, or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.

 

International Human Rights Standards on Freedom of Religion or Belief are used to review the actions of governments, religions or beliefs, non-governmental organizations and civil society under constitutional systems such as Separation of Church and State, State Church, Theocratic, and other legal frameworks. The concept Separation of Religion or Belief and State means equal, fair and practical support for all theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief, in tandem with international human rights standards on freedom of religion or belief.

 

Dialogue: United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, at the Alliance of Civilizations Madrid Forum said; “Never in our lifetime has there been a more desperate need for constructive and committed dialogue, among individuals, among communities, among cultures, among and between nations.” A writer in another setting has said, “The warning signs are clear: unless we establish genuine dialogue within and among all kinds of belief, ranging from religious fundamentalism to secular dogmatism, the conflicts of the future will probably be even more deadly.” 

 

International Human Rights Standards on Freedom or Religion or Belief are international law and universal codes of conduct for peaceful cooperation, respectful competition and resolution of conflicts. The standards are a platform for genuine dialogue on core principles and values within and among nations, all religions and other beliefs.

 

Education: Ambassador Piet de Klerk addressing the Prague 25 Year Anniversary Commemoration of the 1981 U.N. Declaration said; “Our educational systems need to provide children with a broad orientation: from the very beginning, children should be taught that their own religion is one out of many and that it is a personal choice for everyone to adhere to the religion or belief by which he or she feels most inspired, or to adhere to no religion or belief at all.” 1

 

The 1981 U.N. Declaration states; “Every child shall enjoy the right to have access to education in the matter of religion or belief in accordance with the wishes of his parents, and shall not be compelled to receive teaching on religion or belief against the wishes of his parents, the best interests of the child being the guiding principle.” With International Human Rights safeguards, early childhood education is the best time to begin to build tolerance, understanding and respect for freedom of religion or belief.

 

Documents Attached:

 

Deadly Nigerian Religious Clashes Kill Hundreds

Basic Questions about Language of Religion in Sub-Saharan Africa

Five Experts Study - Preparation for Durban Review Conference in 2009

Now is the Time for a U.N. Convention on Freedom of Religion or Belief