RECORDING Maximising rights in religious education institutions: International perspectives

Human rights practitioners and policymakers have long considered how to ‘balance’ human rights when they intersect or overlap. But what if we have been using the wrong metaphor to guide this important work?

As part of the ALRC’s Inquiry into Religious Educational Institutions and Anti-Discrimination Laws, the ALRC and Wolters Kluwer hosted a webinar to hear from international human rights experts on how to best maximise the realisation of all rights in the context of religious educational institutions.

In launching this discussion, former UN Special Rapporteur of freedom of religion and belief, Professor Heiner Bielefeldt (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg), queried whether the ‘balancing’ metaphor presumes that human rights interact in a zero-sum manner in which one right must be compromised to allow for the other. If so, this act of balancing may detract from the aspiration that all humans enjoy all rights to the maximum extent possible.

Reframing the ‘balancing’ of rights as the ‘maximising’ of all rights, moderator Professor Carolyn Evans (Griffith University) led Professor Heiner Bielefeldt and Professor Lucy Vickers (Oxford Brookes University) through an exploration of international perspectives on how rights can be maximised in the provision of education and employment in religious educational institutions. This discussion responded to questions posed by webinar attendees such as:

• What happens when rights to non-discrimination and religious freedom interact? How are limitations on rights managed in the context of religious educational institutions?
• The child is a right holder as is the parent, how do these right interact?
• What is the role of the state as a guarantor of rights? How relevant is the child’s right to education?
• How does religious freedom permit religious educational institutions to cultivate a community of faith and when can religious freedom be limited
• If there is tension between rights to non-discrimination and religious freedom, should this be resolved by an individual leaving a religious educational institution? Does this protect all rights?