The days of the Office of Religious Freedom may be numbered. Established by the Conservative government in 2013 to advocate on behalf of threatened religious minorities around the world, and currently housed within Global Affairs Canada, its ambassador’s term and its funding will run out at the end of March. The federal government should let it expire. It can do a better job of promoting religious freedom — and all human rights — without an Office of Religious Freedom.

A compelling case exists for the Canadian government to advocate for the protection of religious freedom abroad. The growth of both aggressive secularism and politicized religious extremism has magnified the scale and depth of religious persecution. The Pew Research Center estimates that an astounding 76 per cent of the world’s population lives in countries where religious freedom is highly restricted. While our experience is hardly blemish free, Canadian commitments to religious pluralism position us well to advocate for its advancement internationally. The protection of religious freedom enhances democracy, stability and peace; by joining advocacy efforts Canada can help bring religious freedom into the mainstream of international relations.

Critics however have warned that this is treacherous terrain. The international promotion of religious freedom by Western states risks repeating “civilizing” colonial missions, imposing fixed standards without sensitivity to cultural and historical specificities, adding to the already overburdened social salience of religious difference, and neglecting other sources of tension and conflict. The international promotion of religious freedom is a fraught project if it does not engage local populations appropriately or undermines plural and contextualized understandings of religious freedom across the globe. Canada must not assume that our model fits well with the experiences and needs of other states.

These concerns were exacerbated by the hypocrisy of a government that expressed interest in promoting religious freedom abroad while simultaneously undermining it at home, most blatantly in the case of the niqab. Moreover, by creating an office dedicated solely to the promotion of religious freedom, the Harper government appeared to attach more importance to religious freedom than it did to other human rights.

This was a fundamental error. Human rights are indivisible and interconnected. There should be no hierarchy of human rights, no privileging of some over others. The promotion of religious freedom alone can lead us to see only part of people’s experiences, and can obscure other equally important issues. For example, women and children may be denied basic rights across an entire society, whether or not they are members of religious minorities. States may imprison individuals solely on the basis of their beliefs, religious or otherwise. Viewing complex and interwoven issues through the lens of a single human right will not produce adequate responses. Canada should take an expansive view and advocate for the protection of all human rights.

The solutions thus lie beyond religious freedom. Yet critics go too far in suggesting that we abandon efforts to promote religious freedom altogether. The better course is to integrate the promotion of religious freedom into a broader mandate of human rights promotion. The government should close the Office of Religious Freedom, ending the implicit hierarchy of human rights and prioritization of religious identities it reflects. In its place, it could create a Human Rights Office within Global Affairs Canada with a comprehensive rights-promoting mandate.

The new office should treat religious freedom and other human rights as universal but not uniform norms. Religious freedom must be understood in a manner that is capable of adaptation to local realities. Canada should join others in speaking out against obvious violations of basic rights — like persecution of individuals solely on the basis of their beliefs. It should avoid advocating fixed policy prescriptions to more complicated human rights issues, stressing instead the importance of contextualized approaches and the search for multilateral consensus.

Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion recently said that “human rights are interdependent, universal and indivisible.” He’s right. They also have to be promoted internationally in a manner that avoids creating a hierarchy of rights, is attentive to local cultural and historical specificities, and proceeds by collaboration and co-operation. If these principles are followed, far from abandoning the promotion of religious freedom, closing the Office of Religious Freedom and creating a new Human Rights Office will enable Canada to promote all human rights, including religious freedom, more effectively.

Bruce Ryder is an associate professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. Luka Ryder-Bunting studies political science at McGill University.

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