Religious Pluralism in International Human Rights Law

In the early decades of the XX century, religion, as a social fact, was considered a dying agent. Social scientists had settled for the upcoming death of religion and the gradual secularization of society and individual minds. In the late decades of the same century, though, a radical shift shook that paradigm: field observation showed religion was still present within society and individual minds, it was only hiding behind new patterns and new dynamics. It was becoming more individual an experience, less rigid, more spiritual, and relegating religious institutions and prominent religious figures to a very limited and narrow dimension of social life. As a result of this individualization process, religious diversity, within domestic societies, also augmented. Thus, it drove diversity and Pluralism to the forefront of social issues. Therefore, this research intends to explore the issue of Pluralism from the international human right to freedom of religion and belief. More precisely, it will part from the international legal regulation of religious diversity, as enacted by human rights courts and treaty bodies, and will confront it to the sociological findings regarding the dynamics of religiosity in society. In other words, using the pragmatic methodology of the sociological school of jurisprudence, the research will confront the existing law, as it emanates from international courts and treaty bodies, to its context of application as materialized by sociology and its empirical methodologies. Then it will conclude on the pluralistic system that the right to freedom of religion and belief entails, thus proposing the religious Pluralism that animates the heart of international human rights law.