A/HRC/49/44 I. Introduction 1. Conflict, violence, and insecurity have driven forced displacement to historic levels this past decade, affecting 82.4 million persons worldwide in 2020.2 Humanitarian crises are increasing in complexity and duration, now lasting over nine years on average, 3 with the COVID-19 pandemic threatening to further amplify fragilities across the globe. In recent years, the rise in situations of conflict4 and insecurity5 has impacted communities of every religion or belief system, subverting their enjoyment of fundamental human rights, including freedom of religion or belief. A number of these crises and conflicts have a religious dimension, sometimes involving adherents of diverse faiths or adversaries within the same religious tradition. However, it is essential not to unduly overestimate the role of religion in either conflict or peace-making to the exclusion of other factors and motivations involved. 6 This approach is often reductive, concealing the complexities affecting the lives of peoples affected by conflict and crises, including members of religious or belief minorities. 2. Some invoke religion as a mobilizing tool, to rationalize violent behaviour, or as a source of values on which to base reconciliation and peacebuilding efforts. Religion or belief may also serve as an identity marker - typically intersecting with other identifiers such as ethnicity, gender, race and political affiliation - for targeting minority communities with hostility, discrimination, and violence during crises, which may compel them to flee. Violence against people or property, including religious sites, may be sporadic or systematic and may even amount to atrocity crimes. State and non-state actors may target minorities because they are in a strategic area, with actors attempting to drive them out or eliminate them. In some cases, armed groups may be recruited from a minority community to push a particular agenda where they feel disenfranchised, disadvantaged or vulnerable and might, therefore, be a party to a conflict. By committing genocide, perpetrators threaten the very existence of a certain community. More broadly, however, religious or belief minorities may be affected along with others because of ongoing conflict or insecurity rather than because of their faith identity. 3. There is a nascent discussion on the nexus between freedom of religion or belief and security within the United Nations (“U.N.”) system and beyond, including the 2019 U.N. Security Council’s Arria-formula meeting on advancing the safety and security of religious minorities in armed conflict. Policymakers should avoid broad generalizations about the role of faith in either contributing to or preventing conflict, and not assume causal relationships between violations of freedom of religion or belief and violent conflict. 7 Nonetheless, policymakers should be concerned about the significant effects of conflict on religious or belief minorities – including where they are directly targeted, at least partly because of their identity. 4. Intolerance against one religious or belief community also harms all of society and undermines universal values of equality and human dignity. This report contains evidencebased analysis to inform policy and practical efforts, alongside recommendations for advancing a human rights approach that better protects and promotes minorities' rights and 2 3 4 5 6 7 2 https://www.unhcr.org/flagship-reports/globaltrends/. https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/news/humanitarian-crises-around-world-are-becoming-longer-and-morecomplex. Non-international armed conflicts and international armed conflicts, as generally defined in international law. See e.g. https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/assets/files/other/opinion-paper-armedconflict.pdf. “Insecurity emerges when a government, faced with conflict and violence (...), cannot or will not ensure the protection of its citizens, organizations and institutions against threats to their well-being and the prosperity of their communities. Such threats may come from the State itself or from nonState actors. In several countries, organized crime, trafficking, civil unrest and terrorism have supplanted armed conflict as the main sources of violence and insecurity.” https://www2.ohchr.org/english/ohchrreport2012/web_en/allegati/7_Violence.pdf, p.64. https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/325/Role-of-religion-in-conflictpeacebuilding_0_0.pdf. https://www.stimson.org/2021/violence-based-on-religion-or-belief-taking-action-at-the-unitednations/.