OSCE meeting in Baku stresses need to ensure religious freedom while combating extremism

BAKU, 18 June 2002 - The need to ensure religious freedom in the fight against extremism was stressed by participants at an OSCE meeting in Baku on 17 and 18 June.

"Freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief belong to the most long-standing commitments within the OSCE", said Ambassador Peter Burkhard, Head of the OSCE Office in Baku, in his opening speech. "This early attention was an acknowledgement of how central this right is in a democracy and how destabilizing its denial can be."

The meeting, which was jointly organized by the OSCE Office in Baku and the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), in co-operation with the Azerbaijan State Committee on Working with Religious Associations, brought together over 40 representatives of state institutions, non-governmental organizations, academia, and religious communities.

The participants discussed the role of religious education in countering religious extremism, registration requirements for religious communities, conscientious objection to military service, and the very topical issue of the wearing of headscarves in passport photographs, which has been an issue of considerable controversy in Azerbaijan and other European participating States in recent times.

"Values promoted by religious communities contribute to peace and cohesion in states", concluded Professor Dr. Gerhard Robbers, member of the ODIHR's Advisory Panel on Freedom of Religion or Belief, and Head of the Institute for European Constitutional Law, University of Trier, Germany. "States in which freedom of religion is not respected are unstable and frequently not at peace".