Europe: intolerance towards Christians on the riseHope in the face of growing violations of religious freedom around the worldFrancisca Pérez-Madrid, professor of State Ecclesiastical Law at the University of Barcelona developed this idea during her lecture "Asylum in cases of religious persecution and sexual orientation. A comparison".
The conference was the centerpiece of the events held at the School of Canon Law of the University of Navarra on the occasion of the celebration of the feast of St. Raymond of Peñafort.
As he pointed out, there are currently 70 million forcibly displaced persons in the world, of whom only 3.5 million are seeking asylum. A fact to be taken into account: the number of persecuted Christians exceeds 300 million worldwide.
In this line, the professor of State Ecclesiastical Law defended the need to review and update the High Commissioner's guidelines on religious persecution and those on persecution based on gender identity or sexual identity, since "the latter, with a broader and more flexible perspective, take into account the precarious situation of the applicant, and require the authorities to have a proactive point of view when assessing the factual assumptions. The Guidelines on religious persecution, on the other hand, start from a certain presumption of implausibility in the face of potential claims".
Therefore, for Francisca Pérez-Madrid, it is necessary to incorporate the reflections of academic literature, jurisprudential contributions and a person-centered perspective to avoid "differentiation in terms of the level of international protection depending on the reason for persecution".
"Human rights do not depend on numbers or quotas," defended Francisca Pérez-Madrid, "we are all holders of the right to freedom, security and, of course, religious freedom".
In addition, Francisca Perez-Madrid considers that this would guarantee the effective protection of every human being whose life, liberty and security are threatened. "The attitude of the receiving state with respect to the applicant should not be suspicious, but proactive, and there should be equal standards to avoid arbitrariness in the review of the seriousness of the persecution. The important thing is to assess the vulnerability of these people individually and see what situation they are in," he defended.
